Worse than 2 pairs of Handcuffs
by Donrocs1
Summary: Sequel to- 'Worse than a pair of Handcuffs' -Sanford Tobs, the pre-war guy lost in the age of fallout with his insane Mr. Gutsy, Hancock, and his French Deathclaw, Nyx, must stabilize the Commonwealth, and deal with threats abroad across the East Coast, in order to build an army to combat Laslar Seduun and the fracturing Enclave. AU (ON HIATUS, BEING REWRITTEN)
1. Chapter 1

_**So this story is technically defunct, because I'm re-writing it as 'WORSE THAN 2 PAIRS OF HANDCUFFS: REDUX' -So if you're trying to keep up with my current story**_

 _ **STOP READING THIS, AND GO READ THE REWRITTEN VERSION**_

 **Besides, it's better and shit**

 ** _I will be removing this story soon and entirely switching over to the REDUX version, check my profile page for it_**

 ** _Thanks peeps,_**

 ** _~Don_**

* * *

 **CHAPTER 1**

 **Scavengers.**

* * *

The wind was rather calm today, it wasn't very noticeable, a feint whisper, a slight force that flowed fluently and softly past everything it came into contact with, like invisible and weightless water.

It was a consistent breeze, parted occasionally by stronger gusts that whipped tentacle-like extrusions of tan off the dust licked surfaces of twisted metal, and grimy rock. The sky above was clear, blue, glowing under the attention of the star in the void above that once had supported this place with life bearing heat.

Rolling expanses of browned and drably colored land cascaded in likeness to bundled cloth for as far as the eye could see to the west, coated in a thin fur of dead and sad looking vegetation, that was thin, skeletal- unappealing in greens or even fleshiness -these too undulated quietly in the wind's direction.

Stick filled trees lacking leaves or brightness to their stances, gridded the hills and expanses of dirt and rock in the thousands, acting as a sea of toothpicks that all were shaven clean of their natural right to beauty in and of themselves.

The air was warm, cooled with each wind gust, sound overall was almost non-existent, save the tiny crinkling of millions of dead branches brushing and caressing against each other, and the lap of water over mud and sand.

Here, to the east, running down a thick line of layered browns and creams, was a coastline and beach- soiled, heavily, with tendrils of slimy seaweed and driftwood carried in by the tide, which expanded and receded back and forth repeatedly from the ocean ahead, taking away debris, shifting it, or sometimes adding to it all.

There was an undisturbed tranquility of overall silence to the area, it was simply... still. Eerily still. Showing the echoes of a planet that had been robbed of its greatest evolution of life, robbed of its Godhood, its nature, its clean air even.

Indeed, the Earth here, for all this stillness and quiet- had been wrought through the fingers of sentient malice, tossed into a sea of coals and molten metal, and it had been spit out a dusty shadow of its former self. Humanity had consumed everything they had been blessed with in the fires of radioactive energy and copious manufacture of means with which to kill and maim and destroy.

If one could remove their eyes from the soiled coast here, from the rows of dead trees and dead hills and dead rock fields behind that... They would be granted a view of a thousand erected monuments of humankind's ultimate defeat at their own hands- a city was back here, highlighted blue, and made feint from the distance- it was a city of brick skyscrapers and old looking houses of wood and plaster.

Here the streets were festooned with entire roads atop the actual roads of automobiles, rusted and stripped evenly after around two centuries of abandonment and abuse, the land was roamed by horrors that had only existed in people's nightmares, and for what few had survived the greatest genocide in history, you could make an argument that half were no better than these beasts.

Sunken into the sea of death, the planet was born anew, except, much duller, much more lackluster, filled with monstrous ambitions and appetites, and the overwhelmingly set stage for the influence of pure and unadulterated evil.

The human race had been concerned with their neighbors- the prospects of 'Democracy' became blended with the tactics of totalitarianism, Communism fractured in its standing to support the countries it was adhered to, and people's understanding of, well, EVERYTHING, began to change into something that no one could guess.

The United States of America, the most powerful country on the face of the planet, became embroiled in an arms race, and even a race of ideology with the People's Republic of China, and in the meantime, the nation states of the European Commonwealth sewed their own countries into chaos through a brutal invasion of the Middle Eastern States and the North African Independencies, subsequent civil war broke the wealthiest economies in the world.

With desperation for fossil fuels and the rapid advancement of atomic energy, the United States Army repelled the largest invasion of American soil in human history, and imposed American authority upon neighbors who once were considered friends and allies to the north, and to the south where suspicions and tension had re-arisen and spiked.

While Europe, the Middle East and Africa burned, people in Eurasia, China and Russia starved, Canada and Mexico were viciously restrained by military might they were not capable of standing up to, and the United States Army had begun a front on China's coasts, and Korea and Japan.

Before here, before now, before this quiet and polluted shoreline, before this dead and barren forest and this dead and barren city, the world was on the brink of destruction, and the fate of the human race balanced all in a single moment of transcontinental release.

Nuclear warheads had been aimed to and fro, back and forth, and threats had been made for decades, and while the young male generations of the world's super powers butchered each other in the mud and ruins of a collapsing civilization, rulers and governments spelled doom for everyone evenly.

Nobody knows who launched their missiles first, some people claimed it was the United States, some claimed it was China, others that it was a collection of states in the European Commonwealth- but at the end of the day, did it really matter?

Through human's brashness and foolishness, through their degrading to that of lowly apes and primitives, thousands of years of what should have been people's improving upon petty conflicts and disagreements, culminated in their near extinction.

The plumes of radiation took years to settle, but when they did...

- _This_ , what you could see here, this dead coast, dead land, dead city, was what the entire planet looked like now.

Everything was gone.

Cities, the staple of human cooperation and technological ingenious, were all blasted and ruined. Places and landmarks of history and the formation of society, were all left to the dirt, and forgotten. The oceans were poisoned, the forests poisoned, the hills and mountains and even the blasted sky, all poisoned, nature's sheer potential, its beauty and stabilization, all wasted like it was nothing of importance.

The human race had done this.

How worse could it have gotten?

What _else_ could mankind do to this dead world? To each other?

 ** _chsk-SH!_** -The soiled sand here was disturbed by a clenching, oval-like extrusion of reflective steel, that shot down and penetrated the sea of browned grains, and tugged a small object from their sunken, buried depth.

The piece of machinery gave off tiny tan waterfalls of sand loosing from its crevices and interior, it left a little indent in the beach's surface from where it was ripped out of, and the mechanical device clenching it between two prong-like digits turned the device to and fro.

"Hmmmm... This looks-" The prongs waved back and forth, shook more sand from the thing's form. "-Like what I was looking for! Haha! HA! Take that, you frikkin' seaweed slurping bitch of a beach! I FOUND IT! VICTORY!"

-So, maybe, the question here wasn't what else _humans_ could do to the Earth.

Maybe it was the question of what this robotic organism here, could do that would cause a lot of damage.

"-That's right, sir! I FOUND it!" The being spoke into a long distance connection of communication systems, levitating in place through the burning eye of a thruster-unit jutting from the bottom of its rounded ball-like chassis, detailed with three triple-digit limbs hanging low around its waist plate to drape towards the ground below.

" _You did?_ " A voice, less raspy, less... crazy ...-responded through crackling static. " _Nice, man, bring that back here for me, will ya'?_ "

"BAH! Do it yourself, you lazy baboon!"

" _Oh here we go..._ "

"DON'T GIMME' THAT CRAP! I'll fly over there and rip off your balls! That oughta' piss off the mutant frog!"

-There was crackling and shifting on the other end.

" _...Can I have my helmet back?_ "

" ** _-That 'mutant frog' is going to disassemble you and scatter the remains throughout the Commonwealth, stop giving us a hard time and BRING IT, here, usiner._** "

" _...Can I, like, please have my helmet back?_ "

"NOBODY THREATENS, THE HAN'! OR STEALS SAN-BO-FAN-FORD'S HEADWEAR! YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED, YOU ESCARGO-OBSESSED, GENETICALLY MODIFIED HUMANOID NEWT! YOU HAVE DADDY-PROBLEMS!"

" ** _...Cher siegneur... My patience isn't very... Present, today, monsieur'. Can I throw him through a wall when he gets here?_** "

" _I'd prefer you didn't, girl._ "

" ** _You can't blame me for trying._** "

" _Not at all._ "

"CONSPIRATORS! Trying to undo the badassness that is ME, through numbers! I'll fuck you up!"

" _Hancock,_ "

"WHAT?!"

" _Please shut up and just bring the thing back here, PLEASE, I beg you._ "

"ONWARDS! I fly as a courier of Democratic masculinity!"

-This being here, screaming his vocal-emitters off, having gained some obscene form of sentience in his bloodless body, seeing the world through three stalk-like ocu-lenses, and interacting with it (usually through violence) -with a robotic claw on his one arm, a variety of weapons on the others, was named Hancock, he was a former U.S. Army designation 'Mr. Gutsy' robotic platform, and there were no others like him.

The central-thruster on his chassis ignited, and with a sparking kick, a blast of orange illumination, the robot speedily hovered down the dirty coastline to the north, following the division between sandbar and tallgrass closely.

The year was 2290, two hundred and thirteen years after the nuclear holocaust, and Hancock was one of a trio of individuals, living in the post-apocalyptic remains of the city of Boston, in the ruined state of Massachusetts, and they had come together under such peculiar circumstances, that it was of no wonder that their story was far from over in this harsh, remorseless world.

There was Hancock, as introduced, but there was also his best friend, his compatriot, his 'Mi-Amigo', his 'Fellow Expert on the arts of Underwear' as Hancock would quote him- and his name was Sanford Tobs, and he was the man that Hancock had been communicating with.

They had been interrupted by a being considered beast by most, in possession of a variety of languages and cultural distinctions that otherwise no longer persisted on blasted Earth- she was a seven foot tall, biogenetically engineered weapon, a reptilian creature of swiftness, agility, and strength.

Most people knew her species as 'Deathclaws' -horrors of the Wastes.

She was Nyx, and, she couldn't have been _too_ bad, because she had been living with the two of them for the past year.

Indeed there had been an adventure, one of diluted nonsensicalness, of epic paragon change, with lots of fighting and heroic actions... They had beaten a super power back, and had collapsed another one, found out a lot about themselves and each other, and it solidified a team that showed no signs of breakage.

Sanford, Hancock and Nyx had traveled the city of Boston and the northern expanses of the territory referred to as the 'Commonwealth' last time, in a quest that was unmatched by anything any of them had ever done before.

Sanford was tired of it, and so was Nyx, and while Hancock _always_ had a desire to shoot things, he too was willing to take a temporary leave of such practices- all three of them had no idea, that in the following few days, that leave wasn't going to last.

But, as of right now, none of that was important.

It wasn't important, _yet_.

So Hancock sped down the beach without much care to any of that, because, well, he had no idea any of it was coming.

He bypassed the splayed out and sleek form of a dead Razorfin, the mutated dolphin lain on its side, its fang-ridden mouth agape, and its one seeable eye wide and lifeless, sand matted its otherwise pristine hide everywhere, and flies had started to congregate by its jaws.

Out to sea, to Hancock's right, the shadowy outlines of several boats and aquatic craft sat half-sunken in the salt water of the Atlantic, mostly tugboats, trawls and some old private yachts- having drifted from wherever they had been tethered into the shallows, they were eerie husks.

Hancock wasn't aiming for any of those.

It was the queen mother of wrecks, right up ahead, that he was heading towards.

With its stern protruding and raising into the blue, detail lacking sky of Boston by almost four stories- a massive ship painted red and black along its rusted flanks, and white by its varied cabins and superstructures on top of the deck, was sunk up to its midpoint in the sea, where its rear beached and shot upwards.

The ship had no name that anyone knew or remembered, or, really that anyone gave a crap enough to actually discover- there were great tears and holes ripped and broken through its hull everywhere, including one that was relatively close to the sand of the beach, its bottom chin underneath a shallow diversion of sea water.

Hancock zipped under the shadow of the wrecked cruise ship, and he levitated over the lick of water by this breach, kicking up a tiny salty breeze in his wake, he slipped into the fissure beyond.

"SIR! I GOT it! Haha! HA-HA! Ha! Yeah-ha! Just another proving point to my SUPERIORITY! Take that, peasants!"

Hancock floated over a rectangle of shallow water, filled up nearly to its top with piled rubble and scrap- up above him there were at least two stories of the ship's interior that had collapsed and were holed out, with the cabins and chambers of each side of the vessel clearly visible in the broken 'Walls' on either side of the trench.

"I'm up here, Han'," -A metal arm jutted from the top lip of one of the floor sections of a chamber above. "-Come on up."

"-Well! What if I don't FEEL like it?!"

"Fine, then fuck off."

"NAZI!"

"Screaming coffee machine."

"Pube-Pulling Ape!"

"Ranting soda vendor."

"BIGFOOT SCREWER!"

"Barking car muffler."

"MONKEY!"

-Hancock's further rants were cut off.

 ** _PNK!_** -A piece of rusty steel, a flap of the stuff, probably peeled off a wall- rebounded off the space between two of his ocu-lenses, and splashed into the water below him.

"-AGH! I'M HIT! MEDIVAC! DOCTOR! SOMETHING!" Hancock reeled back, and felt about his chassis with his buzzsaw attachment. "-HA! Not a scratch on me! You don't have no game, you overgrown garden snake!"

Up above, leaning over the chin of another floor section on the opposite side of the trench that Sanford was in, was a seven foot tall, hunched over, and scaly being, with individual, black colored spines running down her back.

Her elongated head was lowered for the robot down below- Nyx smiled with rows of fangs behind her chops, she reached up and scratched at an irritation behind her left, curling horn with her knuckle.

"You must at least offer me... 'Kudos'... is it?" She looked across the trench for Sanford.

"-That's right." He chimed.

"-Yes, then, you must give me 'Kudos' for good aim, usiner."

"Suck my sprocket-pump!"

"Pffft..." She blew it out her chops, lips flapping, the Deathclaw rolled her eyes and turned back to whatever she was doing up there.

"DING-DING! Second floor! Tinkering mad-men playing Frankenstein with blow-up dolls!" Hancock laughed as he rose up to level above. "-How long is this shit gonna' TAKE you, sir?!"

"A 'Blow Up Doll', really?" Sanford grinned, his helmet still off- he turned around from where he crouched in a rusty room by Hancock's flank. "Did you find this guy's chip?"

"AFFIRMATIVE! Fucker tried to dump it on the beach! Well I showed him! With my DETECTIVE skills!"

"Yep, detective, uh-huh."

"MOCKING SON OF A BITCH!"

"Quit yelling and gimme' the chip! Good Christ!" Sanford jammed an armored hand and arm up, flexing his fingers. "-Let's go!"

"But Sanford! It's in my nature!" Hancock floated into the room and stuck his claw into Sanford's plated palm, depositing a tiny square of thin, plastic-ish' synthetic material.

"...There isn't a THING natural about you, usiner..." -Came in a slight echo from the other side of the ship's demolished center.

"Nobody asked you, Puff The Magic Assbag!" Hancock snapped. "-I don't know how Sanford tolerates your Communism induced shit! But I sure WON'T! I REFUSE!"

"Soyez silencieux..."

"Quit using your cryptic foreign-person code on me!"

"Be quiet..."

"NEVVAAAA!"

"Shut UP." **_CLNK!_** -Sanford leaned over and chucked yet another object at his robot, where it bounced off and rattled to the deck.

"-IF ONE OF YOU SCUFFS MY PAINT, I'LL-" Hancock spun around, and then, he looked down at what his comrade had thrown at him. "...D-Did you just nail me with that man's severed hand?!"

"It's synthetic, cry for me." Sanford shrugged, turning back around. "Guy was fast, I'll give him that."

"No creature from the Institute is too fast for me." Nyx chuckled from across the trench. "-I found some coppery material, mon ami', is that... good?"

"Is it wire?" Sanford stopped what he was doing, angled his eyes back, narrowing them.

"Yes."

"Then I say, take it."

"Oui'."

"Han', quit floating around like that, make yourself useful, and get over here."

"-Now you're gonna' give me orders, eh?!" Hancock ranted, his thruster angling, his chassis drifting closer. "We-he-hell! I've got NEWS for you, ya' Black Shirt lover!"

"-'Black Shirt'- lover?" Sanford chuckled, looking over the corpse a bit more. "What does that even mean, man?"

"BLACK SHIRTS! Like the Italian ones, you bigoted panty-wearer!"

"Can you believe that was almost four, five hundred years ago?"

"Nope! World's still as ugly with just as many ugly freaks populating it!"

"Yeah, well, while you're having a stroke," Sanford gestured down. "You wanna' cut this guy's chest open?"

"...Holy Nixon's Scams! CAN I?!"

"...Yes?"

"EAT MY BUZZSAW, CADAVER! HA-HA!"

"...Oh Christ..."

Conveniently, one of Hancock's robotic limbs ended in a buzzsaw, a literal buzzsaw- a wheel rimmed with sharp teeth all around, one of the choice melee weapons his model had been upgraded with from the standard civilian variants.

There were some hysterical, and gruesome, memories that came with that saw, and the robot's unhealthy obsession with using it to cleave through hapless fools who challenged him in a fight- today's target though, was already dead.

A tan-skinned man, he looked around his late thirties, was lain out on the rusty decking of the interior hold chamber, on his back, from where Sanford had flipped him over to examine him- he had been wearing stitched together clothes, 'Commoner' attire, a red vest over a white shirt with brown slacks, he looked like a farmer.

There were cauterized wounds lacing in a gridded pattern up and down the man's back, from super heated particles of carbon that had singed clean through his clothes, and had destroyed the sections of flesh they had impacted, leaving blackened holes that smelt of burning skin.

One of the bolts had clipped off the man's left hand, and another left his left leg connected to his pelvis by a mere few strings- there wasn't a lot of blood, and Sanford had no qualms with his killing of the person who had, in past actuality, fled from them for almost six miles from where they'd found him.

The reason for this was simple.

This man was _supposed_ , to be Edwin Pym, a crop tender on a nearby agricultural settlement, but the problem was, this was _not_ Mr. Pym, even though it looked like him, dressed like him, talked and sounded like him, and even smoked the same cigarettes he liked...

The scrunched up face of the imposter remained expressionless through Sanford's judgment after the killing shot had been made here- he was able to lean back in his armor, and raise his lower lip in all knowing as Hancock began his bloody work.

It was actual blood, but it was blood that had been grown around a body of inorganic material.

 ** _sVVVVVMMMMM!_** -The sound of the saw cutting into artificial flesh, it sounded exactly like it did with normal flesh, Sanford knew, he'd heard both before, many times.

Blood catapulted from the spinning, shining wheel of Hancock's saw- gradually replacing the outer rings of silver with reflective crimson- blood spattered in the form of a million dots on the ceiling above, and Sanford made sure to step back enough to avoid the spray.

As he moved, his very body made mechanical thuds, thunks, and servo whines- his limbs were protected by enwrapping gauntlets and boots, his body beneath a cuirass of impenetrable alloys, and the entirety of the armor supported by an internal pipe and circuit system over a skeletal exo mainframe.

Sanford Tobs was a scavenger, he had always been- and it was how he had come into possession of the armor he wore- which was an experimental X-01 type that had been manufactured around two hundred years ago, by the United States Military's brightest scientific minds at the eve of nuclear holocaust.

This was the suit that had lasted Sanford the last year throughout the territory of the Commonwealth, the former city of Boston- his birthplace before the war, or the world it had created. Understand, that Sanford was over two hundred years old, and he had Vault Tec and their cryo systems to thank for that.

He also, had a particularly significant pair of people who played a hand in the way he had evolved- and they were the ones responsible for this mockery of humanity on the floor of the cruise ship chamber.

"-JUICY! Ha-ha! All clear, sir!" Hancock's saw gradually clipped to stillness, he saluted with his claw, and levitated back, revealing a crimson trench, parted on both sides with vein riddled, tan-hinted flaps, the mouth of the fissure had teeth too- this creature's shattered ribs.

No internal organs were present beyond that point.

There was an internal skeleton, and rounded protective casing, that was pure white, like porcelain- stained with blood everywhere.

This thing, was not a farmer named Edwin Pym.

It was a synthetic humanoid, a copy of Edwin, installed in the population of the farm by a fallen group of people known as the 'Institute' -which Sanford had collapsed after the largest firefight in his life, a year ago.

The floor behind them shuttered, and metal creaked- Sanford turned over his rounded pauldron of the X-01's flank and watched as Nyx used her long nails on her claws to clench the jagged edge of the separated flooring, and haul herself up to stand behind.

"You got him open, monsieur'?"

"Han' did, yeah."

"His number should read 15.90."

"Are you sure with nine-zero?"

"Nine-zero, Sanford, yes."

Sanford fell to a single knee on the rusty floor, he leaned his bare head around, his lower lip raised at the disgusting appearance of the mangled corpse. The tanned face, still expressionless, almost mocked Sanford with a stuck up look of victory, despite death being met.

He reached up with a gauntlet, and dragged the fingers down the rounded girth of the interior white structuring that was behind the shattered, fake ribs- he slid away some trails of globular blood and matter, and saw a tiny code carved underneath the division between two separate plates.

It read- _15.90-D_

They got him.

"Yeah, that's him..." Sanford sighed, the suit lurching as he stood up straight. "We got him."

"Is that the last of them, finally?"

"It only took us two months, but yeah..." Sanford sighed, angling his head down at the corpse. "-Good thing too, one less menace for these people to deal with."

"HA! Take that big-heads who currently rot in hell!" Hancock proclaimed. "-We GOT 'em! ALL OF THEM! NO SURVIVORS! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!-"

 ** _CLK!_**

"-UNHAND ME, VIAL SPAWN OF THE DEVIL-!"

Nyx grunted, reached forwards, and the fingers of her great hand snatched and clenched over the top of Hancock's chassis, before the Deathclaw simply flicked her whole arm past her hip, and sent the Mr. Gutsy careening over the edge of the severed floor behind her, to the bottom of the trench.

There was silence, and then a splash of water, muffled by the consistently trademarked sound of a bag of tin cans.

Sanford looked between his reptilian friend- who was now smiling at the peace and quiet- and then past her to the division of the cruise ship's interior.

"Thanks." He flashed a grin.

"It was my pleasure." Nyx sighed, her tail arcing slowly behind her. "I'm hungry, how about you, Sanford?"

"After all that surgery? That messy, messy..." Sanford glanced up at the ceiling, whistled at the spatters of blood. "-MESSY, surgery?"

"Do we have any Salisbury left? I can't recall if we had found any recently."

"Yeah I think it's in there."

" _...MAN DOWN!... I'm drowning! HEEELLLLPPP-!_..." -Came from below, echoing throughout the ship.

"-Han', we're coming down, pull yourself together and let's go home..."

" _...I've been junked! LIKE A TOENAIL CLIPPING!_ "

Nyx turned around and leant over the edge of the flooring- still smiling, she looked over at Sanford, her yellow eyes piercing towards him in the shady atmosphere.

"Would you think it a little sadistic that I find pleasure in his suffering?" She asked.

"Nah, not to me, he earned it, he's a little much today."

"Mm."

"Let's go home already, it's getting late."

"I'd love to."

"Han'! C'mon, brother! LET'S GO."

" _...I TAKE BACK MY PRIOR ANALOGY! This is worse than TWO pairs of handcuffs! SOMEONE GET THE JAWS OF LIFE! And an old fifties era' copy of Time magazine so I can bore your asses to death! And now I'm- CHAFING! Fuckers!_ "

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER 2**

 **What I fixed here, isn't fixed there.**

* * *

When Sanford had been a boy, he had a house and family and all the gifts to come with it. He had a father, a mother, both of whom loved him dearly, he had books to read, movies to watch, food to eat, drink to drink, and basically every other thing that could ensure him happiness, it was all readily available for him- life was good.

He lived in the northern wise suburbs directly outside the main developed fringes of the capitol city of Boston, the largest and most economically successful city in Massachusetts at the time. This was around... 2060? Maybe 2061 or 2062? When he was born? Sanford didn't remember, it wasn't important anymore, he didn't know.

Point was, he lived in this cozy little house far away from the burning globe around him, away from the food stamp riots that devolved the streets of Manhattan under the shoes of angry mobs, the massed draft of young men across the nation to fuel an intercontinental war for the United States Army, the occupation of Canada and the Mexican State.

His father had been a decorated combat veteran and war hero for the Army by the time he came home- he had served in the defense of Anchorage from invading Chinese soldiers, and his deeds there had been written down to the letter, in the books of infantry tactics, for all Sanford junior knew.

His father had battled Chinese soldiers _everywhere_ in the cold forests, hills, plains, and the industrialized manufacturing center that Anchorage city had become- he dueled Chinese paratroopers in the mountains, knocked out gigantic guns that the Communists had fortified on the heights of Susitna, he had rampaged through the ranks of his enemies and had saved countless of his comrades... Sanford had liked to think that was where he had gotten some of his ability to fight from.

Of course that was before his father had become... something else, something Sanford didn't entirely understand. Two hundred years later, his father was still alive too, but, that was a rather unique situation that was a story in and of itself.

-Digressing, what was important in Sanford's young life, was that he didn't meet his own dad probably a year or two after he had been born, and his father was able to return from the overwhelming victory the Army had enjoyed in Alaska.

It wasn't long after that leave, that precious and short amount of time that Sanford senior had with his only son, and his wife- that he was again called for when the Army was planning an offensive in Asia and the Pacific.

The military had gathered in the American colonial holdings of the Philippines and Democratic Japan- two groups of people who still were bitter at the United States for disallowing autonomy in their own governments, and landing operations were planned for Hong Kong, Taiwan, and in Chinese occupied Korea.

His father went to Japan, but got tied up when the Chinese instead took the American's place as invaders and landed near Sasebo and several other northern coastal cities on Japanese soil, the Marines and the Army still landed on and took Taiwan, his father only served in Taiwan briefly after fighting the Communists off Japan.

Truthfully, Sanford did not know the entirety of his father's military career, he only knew the specifics of Anchorage, and Japan, but Sanford senior didn't speak a lot about what he saw in Taiwan and eventually Hong Kong when the Chinese started losing.

The loss of life had been utterly horrendous, thousands of American soldiers had died, tens of thousands- and the amount of Chinese men that he and his unit had killed was just... it was simply hellish, seas and seas of bodies, bodies piled so high that they obscured firing cones and made it easier for Chinese infantry to climb over their dead and reach their positions quicker.

Sanford's father wasn't a veteran to show the scars of the things he saw outwardly very much, he came home with some marks from grazing bullets and shrapnel, he had some stories, he was a little more gruff- according to his mother, then he had been when he had left, but other than that, well, you couldn't outwardly tell.

Sanford senior's son, you know, THE Sanford, the one today, here and now- was pretty oblivious to it all, to what his father had done with his life, what his job had been, what was happening around the world... and the reason for that was because his father was severing him from most of the media.

Linda, Sanford's mother, was not agreeing upon this notion, she claimed that their son had a right to understand the world he would grow up in- but Sanford senior, clouded in his judgment by the things he had seen and done in Alaska, and Japan, and China, wouldn't hear it.

Sometimes, Sanford junior would wake up in the middle of the night to hear his father sobbing, and his mother muttering things to him- he was always crying about a nightmare he'd have, and whenever Sanford asked him about it, he would play stupid.

"Nightmare? What nightmare, son? No nightmares for this man. How about a movie?"

-There was yet _another_ tactic.

If words didn't consol or change the subject, his father would go on a money spending spree for his son, and, hell, with all the dollars that had been pumped into his accounts by the Army for being a prime instrument in their victories in Asia, he had the funds to go to town.

With the mind of a child, all the concerns for his parents' wellbeing would become flushed, translucent amid a fabricated barrier of happiness and normality, there was nothing normal about what his father was going through, or by extension, his mother.

When the world had finally doomed itself, and Sanford was old enough to start to piece together what was happening, home life had started going downhill when he would outright tell his father to go scratch, and would read his head off about world events, sometimes right in front of him.

Sanford remembered one time back then, even though it had been two hundred years, it had only been a decade for him, since he had slept for the two hundred before and had been active for the next twelve- he remembered how angry his father had gotten one time.

"-The fact that the military did to Canada what it did, is disgusting."

"My son, you're right, but it was out of my hands from the start, I had and still don't have that kind of authority, it's not so simple as-"

"-Mmmmmm..."

"...Why are you like that?"

"Because."

"...Why are you angry?"

"Because."

"...How could you be angry at ME? I didn't want to go around the world, and be away from you or your mother, I didn't want to fight people, and I didn't want to see ANYONE get hurt!"

"Mmmmmm."

"-Excuse me," His father was beat red. "-But that was my job, and I did my job to support YOU, you and your mother, because it's my responsibility to care for the two of you!"

"I can't believe you were a part of that."

"-I didn't go into Canada! And if I had I wouldn't have been in the papers like some of those other people were!"

"How do YOU know?"

"-THAT'S IT-!" His father roared. "-This conversation is over! Go upstairs, don't come down!"

"No!"

"-What did you just say to me?"

"I said NO."

-That was only a few days before the bombs dropped.

A few days later, nuclear fire bathed the planet, and Sanford and his parents hid themselves in Vault 111, built by the monopoly corporation named Vault Tec, where they would remain frozen in experimental cryo pods for the next two hundred years.

Sanford's parents had emerged almost twenty years before Sanford did, and they left him under the thinking that his vitals had failed- Sanford senior and Linda went on to become divided Directors in the post-apocalyptic think tank called the Institute, where Sanford senior referred to himself as 'Ordy' and took control of the Secession, whilst Linda oversaw the Division, two groups within the group.

Twelve years after Sanford Tobs emerged from Vault 111, found his old house, found the old Red Rocket Gas Station his father used to fuel the sedan at, found Hancock, his best friend- he had become a notable scavenger and fighter across Boston, he befriended powerful settlements, traders and merchants, he had a thing going for himself.

Sanford had taught himself everything over long and hard years, he taught himself how to shoot guns, how to make and modify them for more comfortable tunes and adjustments for his fit, he learned how to disassemble computers and other hardware, how to tinker with industrial equipment, how to smelt, blacksmithing, he taught himself how to fight with melee weapons...

Remember, this was over twelve years, Sanford had gotten good at these things, it wasn't like he had become a 'Master' in the blink of an eye, it had taken more work than he had ever put towards anything in his life.

At the height of his time here, with Hancock by his side, Sanford was made to run into his third and final party member.

Her name was Nyx, and Nyx wasn't human.

See in addition to the occupations of its neighbors, the colonization of overseas territories, the severing of ties with Europe and the greatest draft in American history, the United States had been experimenting with all kinds of horrible things, and had even allowed corporations to get away with such immoral practice to advance their technology and manufacturing output.

One of the things, among an assortment, that the military and governmental agencies, such as the CIA, had been trying to produce, was a quick and resourceful means to non-human soldiers. Now this wasn't to say that the varied combat robot models weren't _good_ at what they did, it was just that for the scale of war that the Army was engaged in, they didn't have enough Gutsys, or Assaultrons, or Sentry Bots to completely replace infantry formations, robots were supplemental at this point.

So the military started trying to grow something, through the use of organic manipulations, chemical compounds, radiation, and base organisms from the natural animal kingdom- they tried to make a cloned attack hound, something that could be programmed like a machine, but was faster, smarter, and able to comprehend orders better.

Manufacturing of robots still took place- it had to of, seeing as there were still thousands of the freaking things still trotting around to this day -what with all the Chinese Americans detained, there were plenty of brains available for Robo-Brains, and the factories at RobCo and General Atomics could spit out Gutsys and Protectrons like candy...

But someone thought it would be a grand idea to make a creature that could both kill twenty times its own number, and demoralize the enemy with its sheer presence, all the while being wholly expendable.

This is where Deathclaws came from, horrors of the Wastes.

Nyx was one of them, not naturally born like most of her now independent species, but grown, like the first of her kind, and she had been grown by a group called the Enclave, or the Continuant of the United States, she had escaped, trekked thousands of miles, and had fled into Boston.

Since this was a story of intertwined fates, she of course ran into Sanford and Hancock, and after a period of uncertainty and rivalry, became integrated with them in the only example of cross-species friendship of such in the entire East Coast.

Though as time flew, Nyx wouldn't describe her relationship with Sanford as merely being a 'Friend' and neither would he, and that's where it got weird.

Sanford really didn't have an issue with it anymore, it had been a year, he'd gotten used to her in a way no human ever could, he appreciated her company and had grown to become driven by almost everything about her, a place he had been polar opposite of in the beginning.

She always had referred to him as 'Monsieur', and she still did, but now it was a lot of 'Mon ami' and 'Mon cher' in with it, he hadn't referred to her as 'Deathclaw' in a year, it was always 'Girl' -and sometimes he said it in front of people just to see the way their faces twisted funny.

Not that anyone _knew_ what the extent was with them, but, people, even in a post apocalyptic setting, were still run amiss by things that weren't 'Normal' and really Sanford didn't give a rat's ass. Every day could have been his last, he lived in a world where everything was hostile all the time, and risk was the name of the game... Besides, he'd done _plenty_ of good deeds for the ungrateful turds of Boston, he could suck face with whoever the fuck he wanted.

"-I think I'm gonna' take a walk over to the CIT campus tonight," Sanford stated out of the blue. "I won't be long, I just want to pick up and check on the usual, you know?"

"You shouldn't travel at night." She informed him simply. "What if you got jumped, Sanford?"

"I'd have the armor, and my gun, I'd shoot whatever it was in the face." He shrugged, and then laughed. "Out of all the people you're concerned about going in the BIG BAD SCARY darkness, why me, huh?"

"Because you're the only one I give two shits about." Nyx raised a brow, leaning her head forwards, water dripping down her neck in tiny, translucent rivers. "Wait until tomorrow, and I'll go with you."

"I just... DON'T think, it's a good idea for you to come in with me, okay?"

"He may have stuck me in a tube, and prodded me, and poked me, le rat laide... But I would never make an attempt on his life, seeing as he's your... father..."

"...Yep."

"...It still is shocking to me, monsieur'."

"...Me too."

"And you hadn't seen him in over twenty years?"

"-Well, TWELVE, but he was out for another twenty beforehand, so, he hasn't seen me in, like, thirty or so years, I haven't seen him in twelve."

"Mon Dieu."

"-'My God'- right?"

"Mmhm."

"-Beni' Notre Seigneur... uhm... et Sauveur'? Right? Maybe?"

"Oui', Sanford, very good!" She smiled, sitting forwards in the water and letting her arms drape back into the banks. "Vous' etes' en train d'ameliorer."

"...Wait, you lost me," He smiled. "-Improving?"

"It means you are in the process of improving."

"Oh, uhm... Good! Ha!"

"Mm."

Nyx was beaming at him from where she lay on the sandy bar at the edge of the little river line that ran through the development of Sanford's old house- the same she had tried when he had first showed his old place of establishment to her a year ago.

Sometimes when the rain wasn't picking up enough, and there wasn't any water for bathing, Sanford would simply come here with her, the water was clean, it was chilly sometimes, but it did what it was supposed to.

It was just an arm of reflective, clear liquid, meandering down a submerged vein of rocky flooring, it extended all the way north, and then vanished by a campus further south by the fringes of the city, it was a long river, thin and quiet here, Sanford didn't know where it originated up north, he'd never followed it that far in that direction.

But, standing in his birthday suit on the shallow flank of the main stream, running a sopping, soapy rag over his sweaty form- he was too busy being embroiled in trying to rid himself of a day's collection of perspiration to really think about that old question he used to ask.

 _Where does this damned river start?_ He'd think. _It's been here for two hundred years, and even back then I still didn't know!_

-Well, now it was two hundred and thirteen, and he _still_ didn't know. Go figure.

In the resulting quiet, the only noises heard were his legs making an occasional splash as he stepped around, raised his arms to get the rag under them, he glanced over at Nyx who was watching him in her half-submerged sprawl on the sand nearby, her tail was flowing ghostly to her right, drifting in the current's direction under the water softly.

"What are you smiling at?" He joked.

"Oh, nothing, nothing at all, Sanford." The seven foot tall, biogenetically engineered being giggled, _giggled_ , what a word to describe the sounds she made sometimes, it was unfathomable to anyone else.

But just because she was covered in scales, and was a little taller, and had a dragon head, and really sharp teeth and a tail... She was still, bare bones, a _girl_ , and some girls just _giggled_ a lot. Pretty ironic, this was the same chick who could lift a car up and use it to crush someone.

Funny how that image looked with only him.

"Nothing, huh?" Sanford turned around and faced her, standing on his tip toes on the rocky bottom. "I dunno', tell that to my friend down here."

"Mhmmhmm..." Nyx curled a set of fingers over her snout. "-I suppose it IS rather appealing to look at."

"JUST to look at? My goodness, I'm offended!" Sanford joked, gesturing to himself. "You wound me!"

"You would be, willing, to try, monsieur'?" The smile left her face, he didn't know how to describe that look about her now.

"-W-Would I be willing?" He parroted. "-Of course, why wouldn't I be?"

"-Non', Sanford, I wasn't implying- y-you simply had not, SAID so, at all... I wasn't certain."

"O-Oh, well, I'm saying now, is that okay?"

"Yes, yes it is."

"This got... REALLY awkward, at a really awkward time." Sanford shrugged, smiling, bunching the rag he held until its soapy contents drained into the water.

Nyx found a reason to break eye contact and watch the stream of suds plop into the clear surface below, producing a consistent, moist dribble.

"...You know, that, you mean the world to me, right?" He asked.

"Mm."

"By this point, it's just... HARD for me to see what I, uhm... You know, what I saw when I first met you, or rather- it's hard for me to see you the same way."

"I understand what you mean."

"I would definitely be willing to sit down with you, and see what we could... FIGURE OUT, I guess. I mean, our biology is, different..."

"Radically so."

"Yeah."

"I appreciate your patience with this very much, Sanford. I know that I had put the topic up in the air, uncomfortably, in the past. I don't mean to rescind that interest, but, pardonne' ma lenteur- it is different for me, now that it is a serious part of our lives."

"Hey," Sanford grinned. "I'm here for you, whatever you want to do, however you want to handle it."

She made that puffing noise with her nostrils. She did that whenever he flattered her, happened a lot nowadays.

"Anyway," He started to trot past her, sifting through the water. "Are you all done? We can head home?"

"Oui'."

"Lemme' just get all my stuff together, and then I'll grab the suit at the station."

"I cannot convince you to wait until tomorrow, mon cher'?"

"...I don't feel right going there any other way but alone, it bothers me."

"Sur'." Water sloshed, fell in tiny torrents from her as she stood, flicking her tail and sending glittering contrails of tossed moisture about.

"Listen, I appreciate it, but I'll be fine, really! I'm running out of things to try and eat me anyway!"

"That's not lessening my concern, so you know." She hummed musingly.

"Meh, I tried."

"Mm."

"You know, I'm getting better at the French, you're getting better at scavenging," Sanford observed as he ran a larger towel from the pile of his clothes nearby, over his stomach. "-You found some really good stuff back at the ship."

"It's all metal to me," She shrugged. "I seek certain colors and I find them."

"I lift things up and put them down?"

"What?"

"-Sorry, old joke." Sanford laughed. "REALLY old joke, I think... WAY before I was born, that was when my grandfather was around."

"You have never spoken of a grandparent with any specifics."

"I just don't know anything about them," He angled his lips. "I know I had on my ma's side, grandma was in Newfoundland, and grandpa met her there on business."

"Your father's parents were unknown, I remember?"

"Yep, he never talked about them." Sanford nodded. "I don't think it was a good relationship."

"You never had a similar type of estrangement from your own parents?"

"Not until now, nope."

"Did you ever think about children?"

"What do you mean?"

"Having children, I mean specifically."

"No. What about you?"

"Non', I could not live the way I do if I ever did, reellement'."

"Is that the only reason you wouldn't have any?"

"I don't want any." Nyx rubbed her upper arm, fingers wrapping and flexing. "That isn't something I would enjoy."

"Huh, most parents would agree with you in a sick sense," Sanford said. "I've heard it's a lot of work, but that it's all worth it."

"Mm."

Sanford ran the towel through his hair a few times, he took it away when Nyx trotted over and leant downwards, he felt heated moisture over his mouth, it always rough whenever she was the one to initiate it, but she settled after a second, and they parted.

He laughed at her drunken look, her yellow eyes narrowing in the shade of evening, she 'Tsked' -at his reaction and bumped her larger forehead into his hair.

"I try to show affection and you SCOFF me." She pouted.

"I still can't get over that you can do that, I think it's cool."

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-

Everything was in working order at home, automated defenses, electric systems, power generation, and water filtration- Sanford left it and trekked into the darkness of Boston's barren landscape, he followed the cracked pavement of the road that lead past the station, to his old development, by that river they had left.

"-GREAT STENCH OF THE GOVERNMENT'S LIES! You're LEAVING ME?!" Hancock ranted. "-And by extension- YOU'RE LEAVING ME WITH HER?!"

"Keep your distance from me, usiner, and you'll have nothing to fear." Nyx rolled her eyes.

"FUCKER!"

"Here's the good news, I don't plan on being away long enough that the two of you try to kill each other." Sanford stated factually.

"I make no promises." She growled.

"Bring it on, you humanoid TAPEWORM! I'll rip off your face and eat it!"

"From the one without a mouth?"

"...Take it back..."

"Non'."

"TAKE IT BACK RIGHT NOW, YOU SWINDLER!"

"-I'll be back in two hours tops." Sanford grinned and turned around from where he stood in the garage- his armor creaking, the boots thudding on the dirt outside. "If you guys could NOT break something, I'd really be appreciative."

"I make no PROMISES." Nyx reminded in a sing-song tone. "-Don't you brandish that thing at me!"

"BACK BEAST! YAH! FEAR ME! For I am, HAN'Z, master monster matador and tamer! OBSERVE! Awed and shocked crowd-!"

"Put that down before you damage yourself, usiner."

"-AS I THWART THE CREATURE'S ATTEMPT TO EAT ME, BY SHOVING A CHAIR IN ITS FAT FACE!"

There was the distinct sound of breaking glass, snapping wood, and the angry, hissing, reptilian outcry of his Deathclaw- Sanford stopped halfway out the front gate entry for the protective wall, and cringed.

"THAT'S IT-!" He heard Nyx scream.

"-HOLY FUCK! SHE'S GONE BERSERK-!" **_BM-Bm-CRSSSHHH!_** -More breaking wood. "-SOMEONE FIND A LEASH AND MUZZLE!"

"I'd say- 'Play Nice' -but... probably a bad idea." Sanford muttered, sliding the gateway shut behind him, he tapped in the security code on the panel of the frame, glanced up at all the automatic turrets rotating around on the roof of the shack, made sure they recognized his vitals.

With the sounds of wanton chaos erupting from his home, Mr. Tobs trotted out into the dark landscape abound, he fell in line with the road, passed a rusty car corpse, and headed south, the night vision filters in his helmet allowing him to see everything with clarity.

He glanced up at the dull, cloudy, blackened sky above- and he saw some stars struggling to make themselves known between the thick wisps of floating gaseous molecules.

He was off for the Institute, or, what was _left_ of it.

And he was going to see his father, or, the man who used to be, his father.

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER 3**

 **Who is right, who is wrong.**

* * *

Nobody really knew why everything in the world was still standing, why it hadn't crumbled, why all the cities and roads and railways hadn't turned to dust, why there was still a skeleton to mark the passage of humankind's greatest age.

It had been two hundred years, long enough for people to even forget such a world had existed long before the ash strewn wastes that currently harbored what little amount of souls were left, two to three generations of poverty, of simply surviving, living with less.

But through all that time, the cities, the towns, all the things that the civilized world had built to house people, allow for mass transit, or food production, or for material acquisition, it all was still standing, usually in pieces, but standing nonetheless.

People used to ask the question of- 'Why?' or 'How?' -and, it was a good question, why and how DID all these structures remain intact just enough? One would think, that without consistent maintenance of the advanced bases and foundations, the bones of these modern buildings, that they would have crumbled away.

Truth was, nobody knew, nobody really gave two shits either.

All that mattered every day was survival, obviously, it was a reminded factor daily. So if survival among a ruined city two hundred years old was what was required, then people would do so.

But, seeing as Sanford was two hundred years old himself, it was indeed harder for him to just throw the question to the wind -(though he'd argue, it was hard for him to throw _any_ question away so simply) -he honestly was curious.

He thought that, maybe, humans had screwed up things so much with all the radiation eating away Earth's husk, that perhaps the very processes of aging itself had been mutated or warped, people certainly had evolved different, it was how humanity had managed to persist in such a toxic world.

Though by now, the radiation had become distilled enough, just enough, that someone like Sanford could have emerged into this new world with little influence from it beforehand, and could've survived if they watched their step.

Sanford certainly had watched his step, he was, after all, alive throughout the now thirteen years it had taken him to reach today, or, rather tonight.

Thirteen years... They flew, he'd say that.

It really didn't seem that long ago to him, emerging from the Vault, running for his life while being chased by all manner of man-eating horrors, or other people... Sanford could cringe and smile at the whole mess, it made him stronger, smarter, faster, and it made more compassionate-

-Though, wait, it also, in addition to being more compassionate, it did also make him more ruthless.

So, did that mean... What _did_ that mean? Was he more good, or he was more bad in the way he handled himself?

He believed he was more of a good person than he was before he jumped out of the roach infested warrens his parents had unwittingly abandoned him in, but that question would never leave him, the question of his own self purity.

He had more important- 'In the moment' -things, if you will, to worry about that in that stead though, so, nowadays he didn't take up much thinking on it, especially since he had finally found his parents. Every day however, it never really felt like he had found them, because he usually didn't see them, and that was by choice.

His father, 'Ordy' Sanford Tobs senior, and his mother, Linda Tobs, had migrated to and subsequently run the dividing branches of a Wasteland superpower known as the Institute, a think-tank of scientific minds and synthetic humanoid platforms that originally was made to help people in Boston.

The Institute had turned more and more towards underhanded, and downright oppressive tactics to advocate what it believed, was right for the people of the Commonwealth, and over time people resisted more and more, and the Institute was forced underground, literally and figuratively.

For a long time, they persisted with tiny infighting, petty attempts to reach out to the surface world, and then Sanford's parents took over, and while at first, as they claimed- they had turned the Institute into something purer, and greater -over time the infighting got worse, and Sanford's pa' started using rather... distasteful tactics to keep his people, and the people on the surface, under control.

Linda was not better in his opinion, because she did not stop his father, she merely separated her teams, and fled into the underwater section of the Institute facility under the old CIT campus in MIT, beneath the waves of the Charles River. This created a cold war that lasted up until Sanford matured, met Nyx, and marched into the Institute base killing and cutting his way through to rescue his Deathclaw friend.

After that had happened, and the Enclave had retreated from Boston, Ordy and Linda had no synths left to war with each other, much less influence the surface, both their teams were dead, Ordy's team had been butchered by the Enclave, and Linda's had butchered each other.

Sanford spent the next few months ensuring his parents would never leave that facility, he hunted down what few remaining synthetics that were active and blending with the Commonwealth's population, and every other day he would bring the I.D. devices he tore from their bodies to Ordy, so he could enter them into the Institute's computer database, and mark them as destroyed.

Sanford did not trust his father, or his mother, even though neither had made a move to try and restart what he had torn down, he always checked the computers and mainframes whenever he visited, made sure they hadn't found a way to construct more synths, and that the facility wasn't running anything he didn't know about.

Up until recently, Sanford had told his parents, his father in particular, that they weren't leaving any time soon.

"I don't know where you'll wander off to," Sanford had said curtly. "-And I don't know what kind of tech you'll cart away with you, nobody needs ANOTHER Institute cropping up somewhere else."

-Though as the months rolled by, and his parents were still lumbering among the wrecked facility the same as always, Sanford took on a new thing to say to them when they asked.

"You know, if that's really what you wanna' do, walk away, find somewhere else to live out there, than by all means, go ahead, pa', ma', go right on ahead, not like I give a shit."

-Of course, he _did_ , give a shit, but, Sanford was so angry, so passionately infuriated at what his parents had done, what they had allowed to happen, he never talked to them the same way he did back before the bombs, he never would.

Depressing, at least, for him. He didn't know how Ordy or Linda felt about it, he never asked, he always thought it was worse off for them- but that anger, it prevented his mending of it. At least, he wasn't so melded by this anger, that it clouded his judgment on the way towards the source of its grinding, and black heart.

Boston City had become relatively... quiet, at least in comparison to what it had been a few months ago, what with people going insane, doing crazy things in the wake of foreign influence. Granted it had been a long time since any powers from outside the Commonwealth had emerged from the woodwork to try and take something, or change something.

Mostly the offenders of that particular theater had been the Brotherhood, varying factions of them at that.

The Commonwealth had seen meddling from Mannesk's splinter sect down in D.C., and it had also been visited by the Mideast Chapter, both Outcast splinters had also purportedly landed here during their respective emergences- Sanford had never seen the first amalgamation of the Outcast, but he had heard relatively soon after the more modern ones had tinkered in other people's business.

That was really what drove any of the visits from the various Brotherhoods, it was all a competition to find technology and smart people before the others could, and sometimes that devolved to violence, and Sanford wasn't informed enough on that cold war to determine who was winning.

As far as he knew though, the Brotherhood, the Mideastern, the D.C. splinter and the Outcast, all were unaware of the Institute's collapse, thus, there weren't any search parties or teams trying to gain access or to snoop around the old CIT campuses.

Sanford may have been unwilling to... _do_ anything, about his parents, whatever that even meant... -But he wasn't certain what would've happened if a group of impatient Paladins barged into the facility looking for tech for grabs.

Plus, again, plus, Sanford didn't trust his parents, but he didn't trust the Brotherhood more, and as an outsider, a 'Commoner' or a 'Civilian' as the hard-asses liked to refer to everyone else as, this was understandable.

Sanford's limited interactions with them also pointed to a lot of icky things, things that no 'Liberators' or 'Knights of justice' should have been advocating. The whole deal around the persecution of Ghouls, and intelligent Mutants was just ugly to Sanford, and it was to most other people too, which was why, it didn't matter if it was the Mideast, D.C. splinter, Texan, West, or the Nevada detachment chapters in question.

To the people of the Wasteland, arguing _which_ side of the Brotherhood it was, was like arguing the varying degree of evil from stepping in either donkey crap, or horse crap. It was all crap, and it was unpleasant, and it stunk, and nobody liked to handle or be around it.

Sanford walked Boston's streets with his head occasionally darting up to the cloudy night sky above, almost expecting another Vertibird to swoop down and unleash hell- it had been a year, and he still watched out for the things.

Down past the old sports courts, weaving between the rows of rusty cars, rusty trucks, busted motorcycles and street cleaners, Sanford found a doorway that was all too familiar for him, on the side of one of the campus buildings to the CIT grounds.

It was a brief flight of steps, through an arch, all darkened in the night's shadow- into an expansive lobby ahead, that was strewn with rubble, and whose center was an open court, that rose up for levels of guard rails connected to the ground floor by stairwells.

Sanford had engaged in one of the most vicious firefights in his life in this building, against an army of the very synthetic platforms the Institute mass produced to keep intruders at bay, and to enforce their will across Boston.

That had been on the fateful day after Nyx had been darted, and Hancock had been imprisoned, and carted away as a scientific experiment, and then the Enclave had shown up, and then Sanford had showed...

-It had been messy, lots of people died, lots of synths were wrecked, Sanford shot down a friggin' airplane to boot... A big old horror, it still made him sweat whenever he thought about it.

But now, nah, not so much chaos anymore.

All the gunfire had long settled, all the synths had long fallen, all the bodies had been cleaned up and scrapped, the rubble set, the fires stopped burning... now the CIT campus was dark, and silent, haunting. A faint breeze was present throughout the halls of the building that Sanford crossed through, his boots metallically echoed throughout the warrens, he was a humanoid pillar of black in a lightly illuminated foyer chamber.

He still walked with his trusty Laser Rifle in his grip, two handed, over his gut, his scanners spoke of emptiness and ghosts of the past, but Sanford Tobs was always cautious, because even though the Wasteland was amazing in some ways, it was also frightening.

Something about dark buildings... It just freaked him the hell out.

Then again, that was pretty normal.

Who'd walk into a dark building filled with God who knows what? Apparently he would.

The cool night air met the plating of his X-01 again, his form was highlighted a dull blue in the wake of the next archway, he strolled down another flight of steps, unto the dead grass of the CIT campus' center yard, still festooned with the jagged pieces of the Enclave Vertibird that had blown up in its center.

The wreck looked like a hand reaching out of the ground, it was sharp, an array of stalagmites- fingers -reaching up for the sky, the mangled remains of the wings were sticking out of the metal pancake's flanks. Like described, mangled.

"-Hey-hey! SIR!" Hancock had commented upon a previous visit, few weeks ago. "-Let's be posh-ass poster boys of Democracy, and have a cup of- LIBERTY TEA! On ole' Texan Douchebag's 'bird over there! Let's take a propaganda photo!"

Sanford grinned as he trot past.

Hancock was one of the most essential things that had kept him going throughout his time in the Wasteland, they were friends, best friends, Sanford could never replace ole' Han', nor would he ever want to.

"Your robot frightens me, son, ever since he removed my man's arm, that machine is... wrong. Oh so wrong." -Sanford smiled again, but this time at his father's past commentary.

The big dome building at the head of the campus yard was where he was headed, up the big steps, past the big ruined pillars, into the big frame with the blasted big doors... Sanford was silent the whole time, his smile being lost in the gradually lowering atmosphere.

He stood in the shadowy confines of the lobby chamber, he cast a glance in the general direction of the storage closet he had found Gengis' body in, and the machine that had been built to hack into the Institute teleportation matrix.

Sighing, the man reached into the rucksack over his suit's thigh, he dug out a small device, it looked almost like a remote control, silvery, reflective, with only three yellow buttons on it- he used his thumb to click the top of the tri row.

In a moment, there was a reverberating buzz in the air around his head, he heard crackling static, crumbling plastic, those kinds of sounds, out of the blue. He shut his eyes, his suit beeped out a few warnings in his hearing, he felt a wave of motion wash through his skull.

The ambience of wind had dissipated, the air was warmer, his suit stopping whining, Sanford opened his eyes.

He was no longer standing in the ruins of the dome building above.

He was in an elevator shaft, a lift tube, made of reflective, chrome metal, that was rising up, through the view of a glass tube, that was centered with a chrome podium plat that he stood atop, lowering down the tube.

The metal slid away at that instant, up to the heavens- Sanford turned on a heel, and looked out over a sprawling chamber of four structures, connecting a diode-like plaza below, to a domed and metal ceiling above, with clouds of golden greenery flowing and sprouting from a garden section on the plaza's flank.

The real and living trees grew around the bases of three of the structures making the massive chamber's spines, and unlike everything on the surface, they were honest to God green, flowing, vibrant, constantly shifting under the tiny breeze that persisted in the Institute facility.

It wasn't so shocking anymore for Sanford, not as powerful anymore after he had seen the trees so many times now, but... but when he had first seen them... it had been amazing, stupefying. Nyx still hadn't seen them, Sanford had refused to take her inside the facility on several grounds, one being the fact his father had stuffed her in a pod with the intent to experiment on her.

In combination of the animosity that had been generated between Ordy and her, and Sanford's unwillingness to discover how Nyx would react to meeting the man face to face, he had come up with every excuse in the book to, basically, kindly prevent her from going in with him.

Nowadays, Sanford was pretty straight forwards, he just told her that he wasn't comfortable with it, and, he really wasn't. Nyx respected it.

As the lift kept going down, its descent gradually started to slow, it neared the ring of the extended walkway from the fourth spinal structure, the pathway that he had landed on, been shot at from, upon his very first time entering the facility when the Enclave had been here.

Standing in the center of the chrome walkway, lacking railings, and any detail to the panels making its surface- was Ordy Tobs, in a blue dress shirt and a white lab coat, he had tan slacks on, black dress shoes, his face, bright, with a smile, was grayed heavily by facial hair, and a messy hat of fuzz.

Sanford was stone faced beneath his helmet's snarling mug, he watched his father through the insectoid lenses of the X-01's head gear, and through the glass of the lift tube, and his mind went blank, because he felt wrong in magnifying either hate, or love towards the man who had given him life.

 ** _CHK-chm..._** -The lift jolted to a stop, the two on even foot level.

 ** _Ssk_** -The glass door of the tube slid aside, and Sanford rattled the podium as he stepped off and onto the chrome of the walkway.

"...-H-Hey, son." Ordy unfolded his arms from behind his back, he waved, despite the proximity, his voice was cracking. "-I'm glad you made it here again, safely, as always."

"I found the last one." Sanford dug into his rucksack, yanked out the sand-blasted little chip of metal that Hancock had found on the beach earlier. "Capped him near the boat wreck, northeast."

"...Ah, that was... 15.90... -D? Right?"

"Yep."

"...W-Well I'm glad, I am, he was a, uh... a staple point of a new, uhm... a new future, I think."

"That's great." Sanford stepped forwards, held the little chip out for Ordy, who was trying to look past it at his son's head. "I want to make sure you enter it into the records the way we discussed."

"...A-Are you tired? Why don't you sit with me for a little bit, t-tell me about what you've been doing, uhm- you can take that helmet off, I'll get you some water, and food, and-"

"Ordy,"

"-Y-Yes? Yes, my son?"

"Take the chip, c'mon, let's go."

"...Uhm... Uh-Y-Yes, yes, okay." Ordy pinched the chip up between two fingers, he was still looking at that blasted helmet Sanford always wore. "-D-Do you want to take that off?"

"No."

"...O-Okay, okay. You, you remember the way, right? This way, follow me."

"Yep."

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-

The bodies that had been created by that final, insane fight that Sanford and Hancock had waged through to bring the Institute down, to discover it was Sanford's father, and his mother that had gradually lost their ability to control their own scientists- all those bodies had polluted the facility everywhere.

Hundreds of synths, a whole squad of Enclave soldiers, lots and lots of dead scientists in the lecture hall here, and in the main floor of Linda's facility under the river... Sanford spent a good day and half carting all them to a place to burn or bury them, he felt like a gravedigger, one of those hunchbacked ones you saw in the Frankenstein flicks back in the day.

The Enclave bodies provided Sanford with lots of data and parts to augment his custom suit of Power Armor, and it gave him weapons and plenty of ammunition for them- Sanford may have found out a horrible truth about his only family left, but, at least, he walked away with a bunch of prim and pristine plasma weapons and Enclave suits.

Sanford had managed to repurpose the renewable batteries that the Enclave's men had in the spinal sections of their exos', it was how he had been able to operate for all these months without even having to use the power cores he had hoarded alongside the suit, from that military APC a year ago.

His scanning software was better, the power supply was rechargeable, and given some time, Sanford might have been able to figure out a way to repurpose the refractor field generators he had gotten off of two of the corpses, maybe to duplicate a similar protective field to that of Laslar Seduun's.

Disturbingly, Laslar Seduun, the Superintendent of the Enclave, of the Continuant of the United States, the Texan Terror- his body had not been present when Sanford was cleaning up all the dead with Ordy's help, and according to Ordy, one of his seconds was also not among the bodies.

What bothered Sanford was that the Superintendent, who by all means, was more animal than man- had escaped back into the wastes of the Commonwealth, after thoroughly proving his disregard for human life, and his active obsession with taking it from people.

Sanford doubted that Laslar wasn't among the Enclave forces that had retreated from Boston after Laslar's squad was wiped out, and the Institute had capitulated, but he did doubt that the Superintendent had just simply given up, and wasn't planning to come back.

Sanford knew very little of Laslar, he was a wraith, a nightmare that wandered the back of his addled mind- a murderer, a rapist, a sociopathic monster with lots of guns and a chain of command over people who believed the human species could be classified by race and levels of purity.

He didn't know what would come of that whole debacle, if the Enclave would ever come back or not, but... Enclave or not, he knew Laslar would return, with or without sponsorship from D.C.

"...You know how noisy this room used to be, when it was in full swing?" Ordy grinned, bending over a keyboard console in the main lecture hall, the one where the man Sanford was thinking of, had butchered Ordy's staff.

"I can imagine." Sanford said, impatiently waiting for the former Director to input the dead synth's numbers.

"...They weren't all bad people," Ordy sighed after a second, tapping a few more keys- Sanford saw the reflection of his father's eyes in the hue of the small computer screen, they flicked between the words there and to gaze at Sanford over his reflected shoulder. "...Some of them were intrepidly smart, bright souls, caught in the wrong place, and they knew it."

"That's fantastic, really." Sanford huffed.

"We had almost ninety of these covert platforms installed across Boston, it's an amazing feat, what you've done, you know, son?"

"Something like that."

"-Where did you learn everything you know? You're unbelievable, you're- I-I -you're incredible, back when you came here, I had never seen a human move like that."

"I dunno'."

"Did someone teach you?"

"Myself."

"...Oh, oh, I... I understand."

"Are you almost done, Ordy?"

"...Yes, that's it, 15.90-D is officially listed, as," He clicked a final key. "-Terminated."

"Great."

"-Sanford, I know, we don't see, eye-to-eye anymore, I-"

"Have a good night, Ordy, I'm going home." Sanford wheeled around and started stomping away without another word.

Ordy, his mouth flapping open from whiplash, raised his arms.

"-W-Wait-!"

"Ordy, just-"

"-Sanford, you're still my son and I love you! I love you more than any other human being on this planet! A-All I want to do is talk with you, just to hear how you are, what you're thinking about-! -P-Please don't leave just yet-!"

"Talk to Linda."

"-By God, she won't even LOOK at me, Sanford! Please-!" Ordy ran in front of him and stood his ground, his face wild. "-All I want to do is- is SEE you-!"

"Get out of the way."

"-At least let me see you-! Your FACE! Not this- this HELMET, your face! I want to see my son!"

"You don't have one anymore, get out of my way."

"...Sanford, p-please-" **_Cshk-ssm_** -Sanford reached out and herded his father aside with his arm and gauntlet, the metal sliding against the fabric of his lab coat. Ordy's face quivered as the towering, Power Armored man stalked ahead wordlessly. "...Y-Your mother wanted to see you..."

"I don't have time."

"-...There are no other human beings on Earth that you're more- more ANGRY with, than us Sanford, I know, I know I know I know- I KNOW this... A-And I don't blame you, b-but Sanford," The scavenger hung his head, looped around and faced his old man. "-Your mother, she- she didn't have anything to do with 15.90-D, or any of the Gen-3's, she... that was why she left."

"She didn't do anything about either."

"She didn't want to kill me, to have one of us end up dead."

"That's selfish." Sanford snapped. "This whole fuckin' thing was nothing but selfish, it was a waste of technology and brainpower, and it was a waste of skin, and the only reason I couldn't burn all of it, was because the two people responsible, were my own God-damned mother and father."

"...So, w-wouldn't that make... YOU selfish too, son?"

"What did you just fucking say to me?"

"...I-"

"-Nono, NO, you know what, I don't wanna' hear anything from you," Sanford raised an armored hand. "-You're opinion isn't valued with me, it never will be, never again."

"...I-I didn't mean it that way-"

"I don't care how you meant it, I DID do something about the two of you, I stopped you, just because I didn't kill you doesn't mean I'm guilty of inaction," Sanford stated. "-YOU, were the one sending out your little robotic boogeymen to murder people in their sleep, I was the one who showed up and burned it all so you couldn't ever repeat it."

"-But you don't understand, Linda couldn't just- just- TAKE my tools away from me! It would have resulted in me dying, and if she didn't have the guts to kill me, her own team would've killed BOTH of us! She couldn't... She..."

"-Yeah? Well in the interest of the tens you've butchered, that would've been a necessary sacrifice." Sanford grumbled darkly.

Ordy shivered, it looked like he was going to keel over. His own son, saying that, it... it was the most horrible feeling in the world.

"-Difference is, Ordy, killing my own parents wasn't essential."

"-And if you still loved us, and NEEDED to do something like what you say, would you look at it the same way?!" Ordy barked, his eyes red, tearing.

"...If I still loved you," Sanford leaned forwards, the suit creaked, he spoke low. "-It would be because you were still the same people who I grew up under. YOU, are not my father, and LINDA, is not my mother. They died. I didn't find them after so long, of wondering where they were. They were dead. Had always been dead, they still ARE dead.

YOU, and Linda, are all that was left, and all that I couldn't bring myself to end, based on the morals and affection of a life I no longer have, and that I no longer need.

...Ya' know, I have a friend, who's really important in my life, and she said to me- 'My morals are my weakness.' -and when she first said that to me, I thought it was bullshit, I didn't think being moral, or, having them, was weakness. You, have made me question that. I can't forgive you for that, I... And..."

The growing silence of the great lecture hall got to Sanford, he leant back and sighed, his breath muffled underneath the pre-War military material he wore. He looked out across the vacant rows of computer consoles, the blank podium at the head of the chamber, the empty stairs that were behind him.

"...And I don't have time for this." Sanford turned tail again. "...Night."

His boot steps got farther and farther away.

Ordy hid his face in his hands, and he sobbed, vehemently.

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-

An hour or so later, about that time, Sanford didn't count- the nighttime Commonwealth reabsorbed him as he retraced his steps through the CIT, and then back onto the subsequent streets linking Boston's heart to the suburban fringes.

It felt like a lifetime had passed underground, when, really it had probably only been a few minutes- the walk back home was much, MUCH longer than the one towards the campus grounds, not only because Sanford was thinking too much again, but because it seemed every beasty had chosen this fine hour to impede his progress.

Four times, throughout his travel, did Sanford run into trouble.

Right outside of the campus, all of a sudden, lumbering around the dark network of blown out automobiles littering the street, a big ole' mob of shambling humanoids had materialized out of the night, their skin painfully sapped of all fullness, and dragged across their skeletal bodies, covered in scabs and rashes.

Jagged, sharp little teeth were bore from walloping mouths that had mutated and become toxic like the rest of the creatures' organs, their eyes were yellow, and white, and sometimes even missing altogether- they howled in raspy ghosts of the voices of whom they had once been.

 ** _CLKCLCKCLKCLCKCLKCLKCLK_**

-Dusk was lit crimson, and beams of concentrated carbon energy were belched from Sanford's weapon, he swept it back and forth, fired with controlled taps on the trigger, the laser beams burned clean through heads, chests, guts and waists- limbs were severed, entire Feral Ghouls were reduced to piles of cindering dust that sprawled and stained the pavement.

Sanford was wordless and silent the whole time, save the barks of his rifle- he was tinged bright red with every shot he made, giving his armor a hellish appearance in the gloom. He had cut down all of them, that wasn't the issue that had really ground his gears though.

Not even a block away, he got jumped by a pair of green colored, dim witted titans.

A window smashed, a bulky humanoid rolled onto the pavement right in front of Sanford's face, trailing thousands of shards of glass and pieces of brick with it as it went.

Gunshots were heard, semi-automatic, a carbine- Sanford wheeled away, bullets flew by, he fell to a knee, fired a single burst from his weapon- **_CLKCLKCLKCLK_** -a Super Mutant peering round a building corner flopped out from the alley nearby like a flounder tossed on the deck of a fishing dingy -his head popped clean off, a fountain of coalescent crimson bubbled and slithered down his ragtag apparel everywhere.

Then, Sanford was blown clean off his feet by a tremendous force from his flank- the Mutant that had jumped out in front of him, tackling him, screaming and whooping his head off, brandishing a kitchen cleaver that had jagged pieces of shrapnel sticking from it like teeth, bolted to the blade.

Sanford tumbled, grunting, cursing, hissing- he gripped the Mutant's wrists, and the green freak, with its disfigured face and one limp eye- opened his jaws and HOWLED at him, spraying spittle everywhere. The man brought up his armored knee, planted it in the Mutant's groin, sent him tumbling over his own head.

"-WAAAAHHHH-!" **_CLKCLKCLK-!_**

-Sanford put a few bolts into his chest to shut him up as he tried to rise- the cavity indented and burst out its green back, center the shoulder blades.

-And, oh no, it didn't end there, why the hell would it do that?

Not even _fifteen_ , minutes later, fifteen, believe it? Sanford ran into more Ghouls, barging out from a flipped over eighteen wheeler, the shambling creatures poured and tumbled on all fours, and Sanford had to sit there for forty seconds just mowing down everything that came out of the truck's back.

-And nope, that wasn't all, his night wasn't over just yet.

Two blocks away, he was literally ten minutes from reaching the ending points of old Springhill, he was attacked by a trio of insectoid monstrosities, with long heads that were almost a horrid cross of bovine and wasp looks, with sectioned and sleek tails that trailed behind them, and thin wings that buzzed noisily in their rapidly flapping wake.

The Stingwings fluttered out of a house window, and Sanford was forced to spray all over the place in a dazzling lightshow of crimson beams that flew absolutely everywhere.

He killed two of them like that- but then-

 ** _wwZZHH-WZHM-!_** -The unnerving hum of the insect's wings came to an abrupt, and jolting stop- Sanford dropped his gun with how fast he had reached out, and now there were six, fuzzy, spiny legs that metallically were flopping and bumping off the metal of his suit.

One fist was wrapped painfully around the Stingwing's thorax, and its head was whipping about just like its spindly limbs- the other gripped the midsection of the abdomen, and the glistening, thorn-like stinger, the size of his pointy finger, was bobbing in and out of his sheathe on the end of the section, the tail jabbing for Sanford's lower gut.

Sanford blew out a breath of relief, he looked down and lined up where the thing had been aiming for- and then clenched his fingers really hard.

 ** _Plsk-SPKK!_** -Its thorax crunched inwards, the wings flapped once and then stilled, and the stinger and whole bunch of other green, mucus like, terrible shit popped out the end of the abdomen and stained the street below.

Cringing, he tossed the corpse away, and bent down to get his gun.

In the span of an hour, tops, Ghouls tried to eat him, Super Mutants tried to murder him, and a friggin' mutated dragonfly tried to sting him in the dick.

What did he do to earn all _this_? So much for it being quiet.

Needless to say, Sanford was in quite a foul mood by the time he reached the more suburban rings of settlement around Boston's northern expanses, heading towards his own development, with the sheer and simple intent of finding his bed, and losing himself in a deep sleep on it.

He was officially done, with tonight. Just done.

"-HALT!" -Maybe, five or six guns? Eight? They all clicked noisily, safeties unpinned, Sanford knew the sound, and he wasn't fearful in the slightest of it, he was actually annoyed.

Standing in the middle of the pavement, sided by rolling dirt hills, piles of boulders and dead trees- the last place one would think to get held up by a bunch of gun toting maniacs -Sanford lowered his weapon, and hung his head with a heavy sigh.

"-Who are you?!" The voice called out again- Sanford saw ten people in his night vision filters, emerging from the woodwork, stepping down the indents in the land to slowly advance down the road towards him, a few feet away.

"The dusk passcode, you angry thing, is _Brimstone_."

"-What?!"

"BRIMSTONE, did I speak Chinese?" Sanford raised his arms angrily. "-Corporal Hasting I KNOW that's you, it's Sanford, drop the shit."

Dressed in colonial overcoats over bullet proof vests, with trifold hats atop their heads- a squad of Boston's self proclaimed insurance of protection, law enforcement, and justice lowered their Laser Muskets, and the man in their center, Corporal Hasting, raised a gloved hand for them to stand down.

 _Damned Minutemen._ -Sanford scoffed in his head.

"Sanford Tobs, apologies, we don't have all the fancy gizmos' you're running amok with," The Corporal chuckled, him and his squad stepping closer, their guns draped. "-What are you doing out here this late? It's unusual for you."

"How would YOU know?" Sanford said. "I'm going home."

"From where?"

"None of your business, Hasting." Sanford didn't know the man anywhere near as well as he knew, say, Brody, and he hadn't seen Brody in months, and this newer Corporal, he had only known six weeks. The relationship was professional, but... rough, to say the least.

"That's all fiiinnne' and dandy," Hasting grinned, it was another one of those shit-eating grins, Sanford had a corrupt thought of shooting him for a second. "-Watch out for those mercs'."

"Mercs'?"

"The ones you pissed off, they've been looking for you."

"Everyone's looking for me, big whoop."

"You should head down to Bulwark, or the Fort, officers' have been hoping to talk to you for awhile."

"Unless the world's exploding, or something whacked like that, I'm not getting involved, it's not my place, and, weren't you guys the ones who thought it would be a good idea to try and POLICE me, when I was still tenuous with you all?"

"Just doing our jobs, Tobs. Heh."

"Oh Christ- get away from me."

"Stay safe, hero-boy!"

"Uh-huh." -The two parties slithered by each other on their separate ways.

Sanford didn't _like_ the Minutemen. It wasn't on the same level as his distrust for the Brotherhood, but he still did not like them in the slightest, even Brody was a bit of a stuck up at times, it was why he tried to avoid interacting with them altogether.

The situation with the Institute and the Enclave had helped to relieve some of the tension between he and them, but they weren't friends, allies sure, but not friends.

Sanford imagined himself with a work coat and a fedora, hanging the things on a coat wrack and announcing- 'Honey, I'm HOME!' -as he emerged from the surrounding darkness that encased the land around his little abode.

As per usual, the tiny hum of all the electrical systems he had wired and bolted together throughout the years showed the signs of perfect harmony with his little world, turning back and forth on robotic recognition, motor and reaction systems was a network of auto-turrets, hand built, on the station's roof, behind the walls.

Sanford proceeded slowly at first to make sure the turrets recognized his signature- and after a moment, he strode forwards, typed in the code at the gate, and stepped inside the confines of his personal fortification, the thing he had called home for a decade.

The old Red Rocket station... the same his father fueled the family sedan at when he was child.

...His father.

Pfft.

Suddenly his mood was even grimmer.

"Monsieur'?" He had just slid and sealed the gate, clicked the code on the other panel- a reptilian head peaked from the frame of the station shack's front door, long nails capable of rending titanium innocently clenching the frame beneath her chin.

"Honey, I'm HOME." Sanford chuckled.

"That's... Fantastic?"

"Isn't it? Isn't it REALLY?"

"You seem... Stressed."

"Who, me? Nah, I'm fine, I only had to tumble my way through hell and back just to walk home."

"What happened?"

"I got jumped a few times, nothing big."

"Are you hurt, you stupide' man?"

"Don't be calling me 'Stupide' -what'd I do?"

"I told you, I should have gone with you." She backed out of the frame as he stepped in after her, hooking right, for the garage. "-It isn't safe to wander around by yourself, Sanford." -She added over his shoulder, nearly bumping her head into the ceiling.

"I traveled by myself for, I dunno', five or six? Seven? Before I met Han'? It's fine, don't twist your panties."

 ** _CLNK-!_** -She reached forwards, bunched her pointy finger in her thumb, and flicked him in the back of his helmed head.

"-OW! Hey!"

"Hmmph." She harumphed. "Panty comments, again?"

"Uhhhhh-!" Sanford whirled around and jammed his hands at her. "-Hi, GIRL, girly' girl, FE-MALE. Like I said, panties."

 ** _CLNK-!_**

"-DAMN IT-! Stop that! Friggin' hurts!"

"Ha."

"I should start calling you- 'Ms. Angrypants' -again, remember that?"

"Mm." She rolled her yellow eyes as he stepped over to the wrack on the western portion of the little garage, he bowed his shoulders, lined up the suspension loops with the hooks on the mechanical wrack's two crane limbs.

 ** _SHT-TM_** -They magnetically adhered.

"-Mon cher', my only concern is for your well being." She chided as the X-01 opened like a blooming flower, and the smaller form of Sanford Tobs, the actual man underneath the iron man suit, carefully stepped out.

"Well, dearest, I assure you, I'll be A-Okay."

"So you say."

"Panties."

"You're lucky you aren't protected, I would flick you again."

"Yeah yeah..."

"Though, I suppose I could simply test the theory of it being impossible to harm you in such a way, with your thick skull, and all."

"...Oof."

"Mmhmmhmm." She hummed musingly. "-So tell me what happened?"

"Ehm, I just, NOTHING, nothing happened, it was the usual stuff, I ran into some Ghouls, and a Super Mutant who thought he was a fuckin' parkour expert, nothing."

"Mm."

"...Anyway, I heard some... INTERESTING, conversation between the two of you before I left, so, uhm... Where, is... Han'?"

"That abomination you force us to live with is tinkering with your generator."

"What's he doing to it?" Sanford's tone dropped, he was busy unclipping the straps for his combat padding on his arms.

"I didn't ask, il' est au-dela' de ma capacite' de soins'..." She leaned into the side of the frame, watching Sanford as he un-geared himself for the night. He chuckled in his task, glancing at her with a toothy smile.

"I know he's a handful, but he's a good guy."

"Fabrications, mon cher', nothing else but."

"Hey, if he's giving you such a hard time, it means he thinks you're alright."

"That is impossibly retarde'."

"Oof."

"Apologies, I feel particularly fierce tonight after the usiner's antics."

"It's not that bad." He waved it off, chucked more pieces of his armor onto the top of the work desk.

"Mm."

Nyx fiddled with one of her fingers, watching him for a long while, in the silence resounding throughout the station and its interior. Her yellow eyes were glowing slightly in the barely lit gloom, she angled her head and doted.

Sanford sat on the desk's top and started yanking off the ankle wraps on his left leg, he noted her staring, and smiled at her.

"Why are you lookin' at me like that, girl?"

"It bothers me."

"What does?"

"The relationship that you have with your sire and mother."

"...Nyx, just... Listen," Sanford flopped the plating over his shoulder, switched legs. "...Don't worry about me and them, okay? It's not going to impact the way I behave outside, just don't worry about it."

"You would never consider forgiving them?"

"I don't forgive murderers."

"Non', habituellement, vous les tuez."

"...Usually... I... Wait, what?"

"Usually you kill them."

"...Yeah, Ordy brought that up."

"I am not trying to blame you for that, in fact, I applaud you, Sanford."

"...Thanks..."

"...I would never hurt them, if you wished me to come inside that place with you, mon cher', I wouldn't lay a finger on them."

"...I know you wouldn't."

"Next time I'm going in with you, pas de' debat'."

"...Alright, fine, I guess... Alright."

"I'm tired."

"Me too."

"I'm going to sleep."

"Yeah, I'll be there in a minute..."

"Mm."

Nyx backed out of the frame, ducking, to prevent bumping her head.

Sanford lightly set his cuirass over the pile of his padding, watching the tiny blast of dust that kicked off from the placement. He blinked at the American Army star still faintly emblazoned on the vest's center, between the pecks.

He raised a hand and brushed it over the ceramic there, his fingertips hissing across the surface.

What a mess. Nyx was right, she had a good reason to be bothered by it.

Sanford stepped away, he dug into a chest by the bench's flank, pulled out a container of water and flicked the pin and peel away, let it bounce on the floor, he didn't care.

Downing the contents quickly, he stepped into the shack' lobby, looked out the glass-lacking twin windows at where the gas pumps used to be, now concrete and dusty pavement, the little plant farm he and Hancock had made, sections of the water filtration system to the right.

He drank the rest of the water, left the container on the little booth table sticking out from under the left window, where he and Nyx would sit some nights, and set up that little cardboard light show he had made, he smiled, and he traced the darkness outside, figuring where the fake Eiffel Tower would be set up in its usual spot if it was actually there now.

That had been a whole year ago... Wow. Just wow.

Time had flown.

Sanford glanced into the doorframe of his- well, _their_ , room, now it kind of was, she slept in there too -and saw Nyx lain out on the mats in there, waiting patiently for him, a dark mass in the shade, with her back to him.

He looked back at the garage, and then out the window again.

Time really, really, had flown.

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER 4**

 **Storm's Coming.**

* * *

He didn't quite know what it was, but, for whatever reason, Sanford Tobs had woken up that day and he had felt that something, really, really, _really_ bad, was about to happen. Again, he didn't quite know why, but, he had a bad feeling about today, call him crazy if you will.

The morning was routine, in fact, the whole damned day, was routine, the same thing they had been doing for almost a year. Sanford would wake up, Nyx would sleep in, Hancock would be ranting and getting loud for hours on end and somehow she slept through it all.

Then Sanford would suit up, Hancock would reload his prized weapons, and Nyx would either go out and hunt something for meat, or would watch idly without much to do for herself in such arming ways. Then they would trek out into the Commonwealth, and Sanford would try and direct them to a place where maybe something, anything, was worth salvaging.

As the situation had been a year ago, those kinds of places were thinning more and more, Boston was becoming stripped, like layers of steel, and it was getting more and more brittle for scavengers and even traders to continue to make a profit around the area.

People had been talking about moving west or north, chancing the mostly unknown expanses of land there to try and find work with settlements in Vermont and the northwestern and northern swathes of New Hampshire, supposedly, there were still people around upstate New York, near Lake Ontario and the like.

Of course this was attempting to describe all of this with the interest of- 'Economics' -of the Commonwealth, and at the end of the day it was still a blasted ruin, but the discussion of economic footholds could be made for the populations of people within it.

Businesses in trade and scavenging were gradually leaving the Commonwealth, but, things like farming, or- 'Domestic Occupations' -as a lot of people liked to coin them, within growing communities like Diamond City or Bulwark were flourishing.

This presented a problem for Sanford, obviously, because if he ran out of things to salvage, he ran out of things to trade, and that meant that money would become scarcer. This didn't exactly mean that he was _doomed_ or anything serious like that, but, it would certainly be harder to deal with other people if he didn't have money or things worth anything to anyone else.

Hancock didn't seem too worried about it as they walked.

"-Financial stability is for grandpa-swindling telemarketers!" Hancock dismissed it with a wave of his claw, his levitation arcing a bit from his movements. "Who in the shit needs traders when we can just fuck people up and loot the corpses?! Ah-ha! LIBERTY SPOILS!"

"Is there a day that goes by where you don't, like, even TALK about killing something?" Sanford grinned by the Mr. Gutsy's flank, cradling his Laser rifle in his grip.

"It is indeed an unhealthy affliction, your barbaric tendencies, that is." Nyx humored from behind them. "Though, it could prove to my benefit if the usiner' goes apeshit, and attempts to duel with something beyond his capabilities."

"-HEY!" Hancock snapped, spinning around, jabbing his saw, flying backwards now. "Keep flappin' your gator' lips if ya' want a one way ticket to ass-kick-ville'! WITH EXPRESS REAL-ESTATE OPTIONS!"

"How do you say it? Laisse-moi penser'... Mm, yes, 'Eat me'- right?"

"WHATDID-?! I'LL SHIT IN YOUR PROVERBIAL SOUP, YOU BITCH!"

"Jesus Christ, shut up!" Sanford snapped. "I swear, if you spent HALF as much effort looking for scrap as you did screaming at Nyx, we'd be flowing in caps!"

"Whose bright idea was it for the currency of this dump to BE bottle caps anyway?! It's COMMUNIST INDUCED! Damned Commies' and their creative abilities of ruining outstanding independent markets!" Hancock ranted. "Sir! I know what to do! We'll buy a full deluxe range of designers' underwear! LIBERTY-WEAR! With stars all over 'em!"

"If I had something so glorious as to give you in the interest of you shutting up, I'd give it to you, right here and now, I would..." Sanford lazed his helm back at the clear sky above. "...We can't reach this place soon enough..."

"I still think you've lied to me all this time, monsieur'," Nyx sighed. "I find it impossible to believe that you have lived with this... THING... for all this time."

"My badassness FAR surpasses YOU! I mean, LOOKATCHYA'!" Hancock jabbed his saw at her again. "-A smelly newt from the drainage pipes of Quebec with a bad case of constipation and self-fucking-loathing! I SPIT UPON YOU! AND EVERYTHING YOU STAND FORRRR-!"

 ** _CLAK!_**

-Nyx's hand dismissively swatted out, and Hancock was an olive drab blur through the air as he tumbled into the dirt on the side of the road, with the distinct and familiar sound of a bag of tin cans.

"Thank God." Sanford said. "I think he gave me a headache."

"Me too." Nyx huffed. "Trop' mauvais analgesiques ne sont plus disponibles..."

Sanford had a foggy look about himself after that sentence, he opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again and faltered.

"...No, wait... You lost me, what was that?"

"It is a pity pain relievers are no longer made." Nyx translated. "I could use a handful."

"...Han'! Where are you? Keep up!" Sanford called over his shoulder.

" _...IT'S OBVIOUS, that I'm no longer respected in this army! FUCK YOURSELF, I'll stay in the DIRT! At least it's democratic!..._ "

"Yeah well, stuff some of it in a can or something and let's go!" Sanford answered loudly. "I don't have all day, man!"

" _...I request a document firmly stating- SUCK MY SPROCKET!..._ "

"...I request a document to get a robot that isn't obsolete..." The man muttered over to Nyx, whose shoulders hopped in musing.

 ** _CLINK...clkclk..._**

-Sanford smiled when a bent aluminum can rebounded off the rear of his shoulderpauldron. He had to admit, Hancock had good aim, that can sailed right past Nyx's arm and hit him square.

"-I HEARD THAT!" The robot was flying alongside him once more, like nothing had happened. "Take it back you arm-pit scratching, flea-pickin' whore-bag!"

"Be a good coffee-machine and make me a cup, would you? Usiner?" Nyx smiled.

Their trek down the pavement was suddenly halted, and, both at the same time, and slowly, like a pair of tortoises- Hancock _and_ Sanford looped around, Sanford's head angled in shock, and Hancock silenced in the awe of what had been said.

The Deathclaw almost walked into them from the abrupt stoppage, she took a step back, her tail swaying behind her in curiosity.

"...What?" She shrugged her big shoulders, yellow eyes wide. "...W-What? What did I say?"

"...That was... That was AWESOME!" Sanford belted out. "-Oh man, someone call the paramedics we got a burn victim in here!"

"-BAHH! Shut yer' mouth!" Hancock snapped. "-I'LL SHOW YOU! YOU-! YOU-!"

 ** _WHmmmmmmm..._**

-A loud noise, distant, it was distant enough that it had a ghostly echo across the hills and trees of the wastes, it sounded like if someone took a big iron door with un-oiled hinges, and slowly eased it open, it was a grinding and unpleasant noise.

All three of them stopped in their two tracks and one hover path, Sanford looked up at the sky as his first reaction, and Nyx looked ahead down the road they were walking on, her eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring as she tested the air.

Hancock, who, up until this second hadn't moved- jerked his ocu-lenses back and forth, looked between the two of them, and countered the previous insult with-

"-A bit of an unorthodox improvisation, but WHO CARES?! Unorthodox is my middle name! THAT WAS YOUR MOTHER'S WHALE-CALL, PYTHON-GIRL! HA! TAKE THAT!"

"...All that, and all he can come up with is a your-mother joke..." Sanford shook his head. "...What the hell was that?"

"It sounded mechanical." Nyx pointed out. "Militiamen artillery? Something towed?"

"...No, I don't think so..." Sanford waved them forwards. "I say we find out."

"Moving towards potential dangers once again, mon cher'?" She rolled her eyes.

"You have a more exciting idea?"

"Mm."

"Alright then, let's go."

"POTENTIAL VICTIMS AT TWELVE-O-CLOCK! ONWARDS!" Hancock cried, following closely.

That sound had been peculiar enough, that, actually, Sanford was willing to diverge from their usual wandering just to investigate it. As such the most empty road was left as they parted from it into open, woodland terrain beside its eastern flank.

The land rose into a hill, the party of three looped around the southern fringe of a great pile of jagged boulders, Sanford and Nyx parting brittle and flattening any blades from all the dead ferns that got in their way, and Hancock just flew over all of it.

They weaved between a cluster of trees and reached the top of the hill, where Sanford fell to a crouch, and Nyx hunkered down just behind a rather large pile of stones, Hancock floated behind Sanford.

Down the opposite slope of the hill, another road was present, it diverged for several houses along its length on either side, though more thickly in a row of ten on the upper horizontal side, and only two on the side they were closer to.

A small, but still considerable, pillar of blackness rose from behind the girth of one of the homes, in the center of the street, the ruined house was placed so that they couldn't see directly behind it. Besides the prior noise, they couldn't hear anything else besides the wind now, and as far as they were concerned, they didn't see anyone-

"-NOPE! Scratch that description!" Hancock suddenly barked. "-Unknown target in the street! Holy cows playing in traffic! My scanners are going BONKERS!"

"Who the hell IS that?" Sanford flicked up his rifle's scope and checked through it with an aiming raise, there had been a shadowy outline of someone down there, the arms were moving, so the person was probably running, just a quick zip of motion, between two of the houses on the street.

Sanford creased his lips, checked his own scanning software in the helm's HUD, and he indeed saw life signatures of several people blooming to reality on the map, they were colored red, which meant they physically resembled something Sanford had coded in as hostile.

The scans usually weren't wrong, of course, there had been some hiccups over the months, every now and again his suit would process Nyx as a hostile blurb and Sanford would have to kink it out, but when it came to situations like this, he wasn't chancing anything.

"...Yeah, the scans are saying they're baddies." He muttered. "Anyone up for a good ole' fashioned ass kicking?"

"I suppose if I MUST..." Nyx grumbled.

"-TIME TO DIE, MEAT-SACKS! AH-HAHAHAHAAA! Let's rip out their livers and eat 'em!"

Sanford looped around a tree and Nyx hopped over the rocks, the three of them kept themselves as low as possible as they went down the slope on the other side of the hill, they aimed for the backyard of a house, lacking a fence, littered with trash about the dead grass.

Hauntingly, a children's sandbox, or, the wooden structure of one, was still taking its time rotting away over the years, most of the sand within it was thinly dispersed in and around it, giving the grassy earth there a tan hue, the square of wood was cracked and becoming buried in the center of the yard.

Sanford glanced at it a few times as he pressed the shoulder of his suit into the leftwards rear corner of the square home's structure, it reminded him of when he had been a kid a little bit, a haunting tidbit, at most.

He clicked off his gun's safety and aimed it round down the side of the house while Nyx peeked in through the ajar and long shattered back glass patio door, and the windows of the rear of the home.

"No one inside, monsieur'." She hissed.

"-My SCANS already did that for us!" Hancock snapped at her. "What in the actual crap is it with you people and DEFYING MY TECHNOLOGICAL CAPABILITIES?!"

"Be QUIET." The Deathclaw's nails slid out of their sheathes on her fingers. "If you get us shot I'll hunt you down in the afterlife and rip you in half!"

"I'd even be a cooler GHOST than you, you diseased frog-fucker!"

"THAT'S IT-!"

"-Both of you! Sssssh!" Sanford held a finger up at them. "Playtime's over kiddies, if you keep it up, one of us could get killed!"

"...Don't think this lets you OFF the hook, usiner." She jabbed a clawed digit at Hancock.

"I'm countin' on it, big, ugly and bulbous! WE'LL DUEL WHEN THE TIME COMES!"

"SSSHHH!" Sanford rasped. "-Shut the hell up! God damn it, Han', go play in the sandbox over there or something!"

"But what if the kid shit in it?!"

"...I wasn't being... serious-youknowhatjustdropit..." Sanford waved a hand. "-Enough already, let's go out there, I don't see anybody."

"Scanners are going down, sir!" The robot reported. "Targets getting farther away!"

"Maybe they were other scavengers?" Nyx tested, following Sanford down the side of the house, her tail swaying anxiously.

"That might not be a good thing," Sanford reminded. "-Remember a few weeks ago?"

"They deserved what they got."

"Not the point, point is, people will kill you for anything, don't trust anyone you don't know."

"I understand this." She raised a brow. "Healthy speculation was all."

"...Do you hear that?"

"Monsieur'?"

"...Listen..."

-Tiny mewls, from something living, this wasn't yet another alien sound of distant machinery, it was relatively close, it sounded, like...

...It kind of sounded like a wounded animal, like something small, like, a deer, or...

"...Hancock?" Sanford looked over Nyx's flank at his friend. "Does that sound like a... a baby to you?"

"A BABY?! Holy crap! WE'VE COME ACROSS A BRAZILIAN CHILD-SLAVERY SHIPMENT RING! Let's get wads of incense and shove it down their dick-holes for good measure! SAVE THE CHILDREN!"

"Jesus, Nyx-?"

"-Do you mean an infant? A youngling human?" Nyx almost gasped. "...I-I didn't think those existed out here."

"I didn't think so either, but... listen to that," It was clearly a baby crying. "...You think someone just left it out here?"

"Let me through-" The Deathclaw suddenly had a wild look in her eyes, angling to move past Sanford to head for the street. "-It sounds like they're hurting it."

"-Waitwaitwait-! Hold on-! Nyx-!" Sanford was pried aside quickly, he stumbled back and watched the biogenetically engineered reptile vanish alongside the house next door at the front in a blur of four-legged movement.

"Huh, maybe she's a jiggilo and that's her long lost kid she never told us about, sir!" Hancock commented.

"...Just," Sanford raised his arms in an appalled manner. "-What the heck is wrong with you?"

"I could try to install a printer and give ya' the full comprehensive list! Ha-ha!"

They hurried up to the sidewalk, bypassed a flipped over and ancient mailbox with rusting blue paint, and saw that at the stoop of the house next door, the one now on their left, the corroded corpse of a pickup truck was slammed into the steps and had long been there to rot away.

The black painted vehicle partially covered a view of down the street, which was mostly open, pointing towards the southern expanses of the Commonwealth, a few larger shop buildings capped a three way intersection a half mile away, and the only other wrecked vehicle on the road was a yellow school bus, down by the shops, flipped on its side and quiet.

The black smoke they had seen earlier was just ahead, and obviously, Nyx could see whatever was causing it and it was transfixing her interest thoroughly, she wasn't brash enough that she had ran out into the middle of the road there, but she was crouched behind the side bed of the pickup corpse, and she was gazing over it.

"...Mon Dieu'..." She mumbled, her tail curling, fingers clenching the rim of the bed top. "-Monsieur', look."

"-What IS that?" Sanford joined by her side and the two were looking a few feet away, at a pile of what looked like wood and plaster, ripped from a nearby house, lain in a heap a foot tall in the middle of the two lanes, with a baby stroller placed it atop it.

The stroller was an older looking one, it had a white bonnet covering the rear half of the carriage, which was cream colored and had a brown handle on the back, with silvery suspension and a quad of thin, bicycle-like black wheels.

The tiny crying sounds that they were hearing, were coming from within the stroller, and whoever had left it there, had also set some of the wood in the pile below it on fire.

"...Who the hell...?" Sanford shook his head, watching a thin net of flames broil up around the stroller's wheels, the smoke was becoming thicker and was starting to rise higher. "-Someone's trying to burn a damn baby?!"

"We have to save it," Nyx frantically stated, rising from behind the pickup, her knee bumped into the hull and it made a shrill jolt against the pavement metallically. "-We have to save it!"

"-Alright-alright!" Sanford pointed at Hancock. "-Stay here and cover us in case it's a trap!"

"But I'm good with kids, sir! I can teach it the art of warfare! RING AROUND THE GRENADE BOX! Row-row-row your battlecruiser roughly down the Nile! Shelling and shelling and shelling, BOMB EGYPT OUT OF EXISTENCE! Ha-ha-HAAAA!"

"HAN'!"

"-DON'T YELL AT ME, YOU SLUT-CAKE!"

"C'mon, Nyx-!"

Man and Deathclaw bolted around the pickup's rear, she reached the pile first, and Sanford came up behind her quickly, his gun one handed, he watched as Nyx reached a single hand into the smog, keeping her head angled away.

Squeaking of loose wheels, a snap of wood and a rush of crackling flames, she tugged away from the mound and held the stroller off the street lightly, two handed, being careful with her claws.

"-Is it alright?" Sanford hurried over and gestured for her to put it down. "Can you see, is the thing alright?"

"-S-Sanford?" She dropped it on the street, her eyes wide.

"What are ya'-?" Sanford leant over the top rim, and then, at that second, he realized something.

It was indeed, a trap.

There was a tiny black box, a walkie-talkie' of some kind, and the sounds of a distressed human infant were mewling out from its speakers, and it was taped by lines of tan to a stack of four coppery, reflective disks of metal, that each were topped with three tiny crimson bulbs of light.

Something plastic in the stroller's underside clicked, all the red lights on the disks started blinking rapidly. **_BEEP-BEEP_**

"-GETOUTOFTHEWAY-!" Sanford moved so fast, it was as if he had frozen time itself- his arms jerked out and grabbed up the bundle, he hugged it to his cuirass and spiraled to face away from her.

 ** _BMMMKK!_**

-A terrible, sharp, metallic pop, it looked like a balloon of sorts had imploded in Sanford's gauntlets, shrapnel flecked out around him, a cloud of gray smoke kicked out from under his limbs, and a lick of fire graced his breast.

Systems in the suit whined haphazardly, Sanford stumbled back, his arms parting and flailing on either side of himself, he back-tracked into the stroller and knocked it over on its side.

"-GaaAAHh-! F-FUCK-!" He grunted, his ears ringing, the suit's systems at least diminishing the shell shock. "-DAMN IT-!"

Nyx made a panicked noise, Sanford was abruptly weightless, his world shifted, and the Deathclaw wrapped her arms over him and carried him off to the other side of the street- as, in addition to the first racket, there was now gunfire.

Somewhere from down the street ahead a rapid fire weapon, probably a light machine gun, echoed all the way down to them a moment before the rounds started clattering. The pavement erupted in tens of tiny dusty geysers, bullets flattening and punching everywhere.

"-SIR! SOMEONE MADE THEIR FINAL MISTAKE AGAIN!" Hancock cried over, lowering his engine's power, going lower behind the truck as the righthand door shrieked and twelve holes punched up and down its rusty girth with kicks of sparks.

"-Why-CAN'T-we-go- a DAY-?!"

"Do NOT speak of such, monsieur'!" Nyx shoved the two of them behind a house on the opposite end of the street, crouching, she carefully deposited Sanford next to her and flinched when a few bullets pierced the plaster right over their heads and ahead of them on the house's corner. "- It's been awhile, it was bound to happen!"

"...We don't-!" He coughed, and shook his head, sitting up on his armored knees. "-We don't even know who the fuck is SHOOTING at us!"

"Are you hurt?"

"Nono, I'm fine! Really!" He angled his head back when she leant closer to examine his helmet, scorched across its front, just like his cuirass and gut. "-Really, I'm okay, the armor saved me!"

"You saved me."

"It's my job." Sanford chuckled.

"-SIR, SIR-OH-SIR! YES YOU! OVER HERE!" Hancock called from across the street, he leaned out of cover once- **_CLAK CLAK_** -managed two shots in the general direction of the fire before more rounds clapped about the truck and forced him down again. "-I appreciate ya' saving the damsel in distress, BUT WHO IN THE FLYING ARAB-MAN'S SHOES FOR BUSH'S HEAD IS GONNA' SAVE ME?! HEEEEEELLLLPPP!"

"Hold on, Han'! Me and Nyx are gonna' move up-!"

"-Sounds SPLENDID, sir! An absolute original plan! NOW UNPIN ME! So I can find these goat-testicle fondlers and RIP OUT THEIR EYES!"

"...It's like talking to a brick, c'mon, we'll flank east." Sanford stood up, he looked about his person for his gun, and saw, that in the panic of rush, it was magnetically adhered to his right shin. Huh, funny.

He tore the weapon free and checked it over, Nyx stood and gestured for deeper into the alley.

"This way, I presume?"

"Did you see where that fire was coming from?"

"Non', down the street obviously, probably on the second floor of one of the structures down there."

"-Han', you have a beat on these people?"

" _-Second window! I SEE YA', you rank Hitler-worshipping used dildos! I'LL SWAB THE FLOOR WITH YOUR INTENSTINES!_ " -The robot couldn't keep his composure enough to radio anything else over, the two heard his rants all the way from where they were, with or without the com link.

"Let's go." Sanford grunted.

The two rounded the backyard property of the house, around the corner of a small and collapsed wooden patio, the rusted remains of an old swingset were in the center of the grass-lacking yard, besides the skinny and burnt corpse of an ancient oak tree with no limbs from its ruined trunk.

The fence that divided this property from the one ahead was completely gone, an old storage shed was ahead in the neighboring yard, Sanford quickly motioned for Nyx to head for the shed while he advanced in the open.

The Deathclaw vanished in an all-four sprint, she almost slithered across the ground with how fast she moved, Sanford was just behind, jogging, with his gun raised for the other yard. If his assumption was correct, whoever had lain that trap wasn't an idiot, and they probably had people flanking the street on either end or both of the house rows while the weapon in the shops down there pinned them.

Sanford swallowed in brief worry, he heard Hancock's gun discharge a few times, and then the distant pitter-patter of the machine gun wound up again.

"- _...Contacts-! Dead ahead!_ "

"... _It's the Scavenger! Aim for him!_ "

-Well SOMEBODY knew who he was.

Sanford cursed through his teeth when five or six individuals burst out of cover from the neighboring house's side and then scrambled back when they saw him. He noticed Nyx tense behind the mass of the shed nearby, she looked at him and he nodded for her to stay down.

 ** _Bk! Bk!_** -A carbine flared twice, bullets flew past his flank, Sanford kept his gun at hip level and sprayed the whole rear corner portion of the house.

 ** _CLKCLCKCLKCLCKCLKCLKCLK_**

-Dust obscured everything and wood snapped off the structure in a few places, he heard more shouting and moved quickly before return fire could amp up.

He advanced swiftly to where the old fence used to be, his boots clomping hollowly against the dirt, he saw a flicker of movement and gave the corner of the house another quick spray.

 ** _CLKCLKCLKCLKCLKCLK_**

-Someone screamed, and through all the dust over there, he saw a body fling and curl on the ground.

 ** _CHKCHCHKCK-!_** -Sounded like an assault rifle, the barrel peaked round the corner and sprayed everything around him, Sanford was already behind the opposite rear corner of the house, the bullets kicked into the paneling on the other side and flew across the yards.

He checked the two small windows on his side of the house, saw the shattered glass and immediately considered what would happen if they got inside and used them as firing positions, he checked his view to the street now behind him down the home's flank, it was obscured in a thin veil of dust.

"-Han'? You alright?" He whispered.

" _-I'm advancing on this son of a bitch! Getting closer, sir!_ "

-The machine gun started firing again as Hancock switched positions down there.

 ** _bm...bmcm..._**

Sanford heard something from the very wall he was pressed to, he checked over the lawn and saw that Nyx had vanished from her position behind the shed, he smirked in knowing, and then frowned again, looking at the wall of the house.

 ** _...bmbcm... cm...cm..._**

-Someone was inside.

Sanford licked his lips, stepped away from the wall, lined up his rifle-

 ** _CLKCLCKCLKCLCKCLKCLKCLK_**

-Put a horizontal line of blast holes in the panels from left to right in a quick two sprays.

 ** _Bm-BM..._** Then silence.

Sanford didn't stick around, he peered around the corner of the house again, saw that there was a back wooden door and that it was wide open, the body from before was still lying out on the dirt down there.

 ** _PSHK-!_**

 ** _PSHK-PSHSK-PSHK-!_**

-Four holes bigger than his chest blasted into the wood of the house from within right behind him, he jumped from the noise, backed away, and rumbled the earth as he fell onto his suit's belly- **_BmmK..._** -He aimed up from the uncomfortable angle.

 ** _PSHK!_** -The corner he was standing behind split and splintered. Someone inside had a nasty shotgun by the looks of it.

"-AAAAHHHH-!" Horrid screaming, a crack of organic matter, Sanford gazed back by the body of the first man he'd hit to see another corpse flail out from the house's side, blood contrailing from a ragged gash in its chest, it rolled and stilled ahead of the other one.

Nyx obviously was successful in her flanking move.

He aimed for the house from down on the ground and sprayed it back and forth.

 ** _CLKCLCKCLKCLCKCLKCLKCLK_**

-There was a hollow wail from within, more thudding sounds and breaking glass, smoke was clogging up through the back door and one of the rear windows.

"-Nyx! You okay?" Sanford called over, rising to a single knee on the ground.

"-Oui', Sanford!" The Deathclaw's head peered from behind the corner, she had blood stains up one of her wrists. "Is the house clear?"

"I'm checking."

Sanford stormed over to the back door, he shouldered through the frame and revealed the interior of a thoroughly wrecked suburban home, with walls of tan and cream plaster, a kitchen with smashed wooden cabinets and rusty appliances, in the middle of the crimson tiled floor, a pair of corpses were sprawled out, one had its chest burnt and blown open in a black flower.

Two men, young, one was bald and the other had a U.S. Army standard issue drab helmet over his head, they both wore drab fatigues, and one of them had a military vest over his body.

Gunners.

What the hell was all THIS about?

"...Guess they didn't learn the first time around..." Sanford grumbled, he stepped through another frame ahead of the kitchen's frame, found another Gunner, a woman, lying face down, she was wearing a full combat dress, vest, pauldrons and all, and it hadn't saved her from the carbon bolts that blew open her face, she lay in the center of what was once a sitting room.

Sanford cringed and backed out of the house, he came back out the back door and saw Nyx leaning over the two bodies, panting from the effort on her part beforehand.

"...Gunner soldiers, Sanford," She mumbled over her shoulder as he got closer. "-There are two more behind the house."

"Good job." Sanford grinned. "-C'mon we gotta' get rid of that gun down the street."

"...Mm."

"Are you okay?"

"Mmhm."

"Alright, c'mon."

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-

"-This'll show you, ya' Nazi-sympathizing douchebag! YOU AIN'T GOT NO GUTS!"

 ** _Bzzzzzzzz-ZZZZZZZMMMMM-SPshkks-PLSK..._**

"-HA-HA! GET IT?! BAHHH-!"

Hancock finished tearing his buzzsaw from the stomach of a Gunner soldier, the man was keeled over the whole time, his mouth open, his throat clenching as he gagged and choked, his innards spilled out as a crimson and plopping mess on the sidewalk and over his black combat boots.

The deranged robot finished his rant by slapping the corpse down with a dismissive bat of his claw's flat, he aimed over the body as it fell back, he fired twice with his Plasma gun, and twin green bulbs of wanton death flickered down the sidewalk and planted into another Gunner's chest.

The poor slob was knocked right off his heels, he hit the pavement so hard that he bounced back up a bit and sprawled there, dead as a doornail, his carbine rolling away into the street.

"-You all got no game on, THE HAN'! HA-HA! AHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA-!"

 ** _chmchmchmchmchm, chmchm, chmchmchmchm-_**

-A flickering spark of light from the second story window down the street, bullets whizzed by and chewed up the wall of the house next to him, Hancock ignited his thruster and sped back to cover behind a house.

"-TACTICAL RETREAT! SOUND THE TRUMPETS! SAVE THE WOMEN! LEAVE THE CHILDREN AS A DISTRACTION!" **_FTTTTttttttt..._** -The Gunner operator team was unable to focus fire any longer, because a terrible and thick cloud of black belched out from Hancock's thruster and flooded the entire side property of the home in question.

The robot used his effective smoke screen to keep advancing while Nyx and Sanford moved up down the other side.

"-Come on out, my fleshy targets! If ya' reveal yourselves, I might make it QUICK! Ha! Ah-haha!"

The robot shot through another backyard, rounded a ruined and partially buried tow-truck on the property's rear, Hancock flew past it, and came face to face with a squad of nine drab dressed Gunners.

The land between this property and the next fell in a dip, this property was on a hill and the neighbors weren't, so the poor Gunners were halfway using their hands and boots on all fours to climb up and get positions in exactly where their enemy held.

They were all clad in pre-War United States Army body armor and fatigues, they wore helmets, drab caps and bandanas, they all carried carbines and assault rifles, one of them had a huge chain-fed gun that took ammo from a metal pack over his back, a shoulder mounted machinegun, he wore sunglasses, and Hancock swore one of the lenses popped out for how wide the boy's eyes got.

A few of them barked, cursed, the heavy weapons guy spit out a cigar from his mouth, almost tumbled down the hill and readied his shoulder-MG with a hand on the side grip.

"-HA-HA! Looks like, THE HAN', caught ya' with your pants down, bitch! TASTE MY-"

 ** _CLKCLKCLKCLCKCLKCLCKCLKCLKCLK_**

-A swathe of flickering crimson shot out from between two houses to the left, the beams clipped into the squad's vulnerable flank, and soon bursts of blood were shooting out, limbs were being blown off, bodies were rolling down the hill and screams were being silenced.

The whole unit was slaughtered, the red beams ceased right as a final corpse plopped on top of the mangled remains of the shoulder-MG guy, steam rose from some of the casualties, and there was nothing but silence.

Hancock examined the butchered squad with his ocu-lenses for a moment, glanced at the two houses, and then back at the corpses, the houses, the corpses, the houses, the corpses.

"...Someone..." Hancock muttered, hovering down the incline, clean over the bodies, he peered between the houses. "...Someone... STOLE MY KILLS! RAAAAGGGHHH! YOU GRANDDAD-MOLESTIN', DAUGHTER-KICKIN' DRUG-ADDICT SACK OF UNGODLY SHIT! NO-ONE AIDS ME IN COMBAT UNLESS I SAY SO, NO ONE-!"

"...Yeah man," Sanford lowered his gun from across the street between two brick shops. "-You're welcome, I think?"

"GASSSSPPP!...S-Sanford!" Hancock shrieked. "-HOW COULD YOU?! I thought we had sealed a brotherhood of understanding to one's right to thou' own kills?!"

"...What did you just say?" Sanford called back. "I didn't hear you?"

"OH! I see! You're MOCKING me! You think it's fuckin' funny dontchya'?!" Hancock bobbed with how loud he shouted. "-Pick on the robot why don't ya'?! Well guess what?! YOU'RE A BIGOT! HA! TAKE THAT!"

"...Hancock, what in... Just... I can't do this- Head over and help us kill that gun crew before they relocate! Get your thumb out of your ass, man!"

"-I don't have thumbs, OR AN ASS! Ha-ha! Mend your pride after THAT burn, monkey-man!"

"...Jesus, if ya' don't have an ass, you also can't wear underwear, simple fact." Sanford raised his gauntlets in the air and turned around. "I'll see ya' at the gun, Han'."

"-Y-You... You... Conniving, MOTHERLESS, whore-callin', BASTARD! I'll-!"

 ** _CLMK!_**

-Something impacted Hancock from behind, put yet ANOTHER dent in his already demolished hide, and sent the rounded robot tumbling across the dirt.

"-MAN DOWN!" He cried. "Someone find me a medic! ALRIGHT! Who's the wise-guy?! I'LL RIP OUT HIS SPLEEN!"

"...It can't be... It IS,"

"-Hmmmm, strangely familiar feminine programmed voice, dramatic pause that can only be inserted for effect upon an unexpected reunion? It must be..." Hancock rolled over, his thruster lit, and he hovered back up to place.

"...YOU."

Standing before him with a humanoid figure colored olive drab with a U.S. Army star emblazoned across its angled chest, it had a slender build, with cloven multi-jointed legs, a pair of arms bristling with combat drills and Laser gun mountings, and it had an oval-shaped head with a single large and crimson carbon projector in its epicenter.

Hancock sized his opponent up with a glance about her.

"...Do I know you? Are you friends with that oil-leakin' dumbass Render back in Goodneighbor? He's always tryin' to hook me up with chicks he finds in the gutter! But YOU, you don't look a day older than the manufacturing label's print date!"

"...I won't miss this time." The Assaultron growled, crimson light building in her center eye. "Make it easy and stand still."

"...Wait a minute, I know that voice! GASSSSP! Baby-cakes! You got your legs back!" Hancock angled forwards in astonishment.

"No thanks to YOU." The Assaultron leant forwards, the drills on her claws screaming and casting sparks.

"And I see ya' got a few upgrades! Might I say, as the Nam' veteran I am, that YOU, look absolutely BONER INDUCING!"

There wasn't a response.

 ** _VMMMMMM!_**

-A concentrated stream of red light shot out and collided with Hancock's chassis dead-center, there was a blast of luminescent crimson dust, the robot hurled back, and plowed straight through the plaster wall of a house behind him.

 ** _BMMkkkCSshhhh!..._** -He left a Hancock-shaped hole in the paneling, smoke plumed from within.

 _"...What a WOMAN!"_ -Came from inside after a brief pause.

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-

 ** _Bshk!_** -Sanford shouldered the wooden door down, it fell inwards in three pieces and scattered on the floor within, the Power Armored man, thoroughly exhausted with the antics of this so called- 'Ambush' -stormed inside the brick storefront.

Nyx, who was too big to go in after him, leapt up, and used her clawed hands to grip onto the uneven and cracked surface of the building's wall, she resembled a primate as she leapt up and climbed to the second story, her tail lashing underneath her for the street below.

 ** _CLKCLKCLKCLKCLK_**

Lots of screaming, the Gunners inside, numbering five, were trapped as Laser gunfire rattled inside, Sanford having found the steps- Nyx reached in and tugged out the flailing body of one of the Gunner soldiers, she gripped the man's head in her palms and overhand tossed him away.

The body flailed through the air, flipped head over heels once, twice, then smacked into the pavement below and produced a fleck of crimson that stained the pavement in a wet shoot from his head.

"Monsieur'?" Nyx called into the dusty interior of the building, bobbing her knees in her grip of the structure's exterior front. "Monsieur', are they all dead?"

"-Yeah, scanners are quiet in here." Sanford called back, inside there was the clacking of boots against wood steps, a moment later the Power Armored man emerged from the ruined doorway and looked up at where she was with a startled grunt. "Look at you go."

"It worked, did it not?" Nyx chuckled, she leapt away from the wall- **_Bmk_** -and landed on both kneels and a single set of knuckles right before him on the sidewalk.

"I'm still picking up another Gunner or two just west, it looks like Hancock found them."

"Then they should not last long."

"We should just check still."

"...Si vous' insistez'."

"Thanks for, uhm, you know, carrying me before," Sanford smiled, changing sides of his rifle's battery. "-That was my fault, I should've seen it was a trap."

"Neither of us could have known." She smiled. "You saved me."

"-Wha'? Oh, naaahhh, I didn't, I didn't save you, it was," Sanford angled his head and crossed his arms. "-You know, it's not about ME, it's about you, I'm just doing my job and all, you know..."

"Oh bother," Nyx rolled her eyes. "Get over yourself and let's find your rambling metal demon, mon cher'."

"When am I gonna' get a- 'My hero' -huh?"

"I told you, it's NOT happening."

"Well when it does happen-"

"-Which it won't."

"-Say it all girly and stuff, like- 'Oh, Sanford! My HERO!' it'll be cool."

"It isn't going to happen."

"How many times do I have to save your tail FOR it to?"

"I thought it was your job?" She smugly chuckled.

"Well, YEAH, but, a little payment wouldn't hurt every now and again."

"I'll think about it."

"I can live with that answer, now we just need- HOLYSHIT, LOOKOUT-!" He reached over, hooked his gauntlet over her left forearm and shoved her aside, earning a surprised hiss from the Deathclaw.

 ** _VMMM!_**

-A beam of pure and shining crimson scythed through the air from down the sidewalk behind Nyx, it flew between them and traveled to oblivion in the distance, it came close enough that she felt heat over her shoulder and neck.

Sanford brought his gun up one handed and fired a single burst.

 ** _CLKCLKCLKCLKCLKCLK_**

-The beams chopped into the breast and shoulder of a humanoid creature standing in the middle of the sidewalk down ahead, sparks and black smog vomited from the wounds, mechanics whined and something metal snapped off and bounced away on the street.

The creature fell to a single knee, with soot rising from its head, a center and crimson eye flickered brightly and darkly over and over, it raised an arm capped with a claw that was seemingly over-loaded with buzzsaws and Laser mounting packs.

Sanford switched to two hands and shot the robot again.

 ** _CLKCLKCLK_**

-The head burst in a flash of shrapnel licked orange, the body convulsed and rattled metallically on the pavement, a small fire building in its stumpy neck remains.

"...Well," Sanford sighed after a moment. "-Now I saved you TWICE, is that enough?"

"...Not really..." She muttered, stepping closer to the remains. "-What IS it, monsieur'?"

"Assaultron, Gunners' love 'em." Sanford said. "Let's find Han', quickly."

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-


	5. Chapter 5

**CHAPTER 5**

 **Someone's trying to kill us... Again.**

* * *

The Gunners were an interesting scenario and group of people when you thought about it, when you put aside the fact that they liked robbing people and raiding towns in their spare time when they weren't acting as sellswords.

The Gunners had started out as several young people who could trace lineage back to servicemen in the United States Army- (at least, many of them _claimed_ they could) -and they pooled resources, skills and assets together to become the precursor of what you see today.

As time went on the Gunners became a significantly powerful organization, they had access to military grade equipment and a means to produce ammo and parts for it, there were settlements down south that paid the Gunners as their town guards and militia, and they had been hired by almost everything except the militiamen at least once for soldier duty.

The Gunners had even taken jobs outside the Commonwealth, Sanford had heard that detachments of Gunners had worked closely with a band of mercenaries in Washington called the 'Talon Company' and that they had worked with the Brotherhood Outcasts, several factions up north and northwest had also utilized their services for steep prices.

Though as time went on, to the Gunners, it became less of a business and more of their own empire, the Gunners nowadays had just as many concerns over domestic issues, housing for people, food and water production and transportation as did the Minutemen, Diamond, Goodnieghbor and Bulwark.

The Gunners had essentially become their own state, just as Fenway and Bulwark had on everyone else's lists, but with some semblance of kinship to Goodneighbor, on paper, the Gunners were still a band of mercs', but if one were to go deep into their territory it sure felt a lot more advanced than just a gang of thugs.

Though this wasn't to say that the Gunners _weren't_ thugs, quite the contrary, the scourge of the Earth joined their ranks, there were murderers, thieves, rapists, arsonists, addicts, pretty much everything you could scrape off the pavement in the shadows of a slum existed.

They were lead by Captains and Sergeants, Sergeants obviously were squad level, Captains commanded units of five to six hundred men, and no one knew how many Captains the Gunners had reached, because no one knew exactly how many of them there were to begin with.

Supposedly, the Gunners were lead by a small group of people calling themselves- 'Generals' -and there wasn't much else known besides that, the leadership of their faction was obscure and knowledge on it was fledging.

Sanford had always been at the Gunners' throats and they likewise to him, it was something about- 'Doing the right thing' -and- 'Being a good guy' -that just frikkin' pissed the mercs' off, and every time they burned something down or shot a few people, Sanford had always cruised along and made them pay for it.

Granted Sanford had killed a _lot_ of people, he had been forced to, to survive, and while more commonly his felled foes were Raiders or other highwaymen and brigand groups, the Gunners had always held it out for him specifically because of how many of them he'd ended.

Sanford had always been a threat, but ever since last year, that stance with the Gunners had escalated, and now it seemed they were making more and more attempts on his life, as, this wasn't the first time they had been attacked in such a manner.

It had been a few months, the renewed vigor of the militiamen had set up the right circumstances to make the Gunners move more quietly outside their strongholds whether they liked it or not, there was an ensured certainty of mutual annihilation should either side go on the offensive, and that held a cold war between them and the Minutemen for as long as Sanford could remember.

Neither side had the manpower to completely wipe the other's defensive home bases out, the Gunners had an advantage of robots and a means to keep them in service, they had heavy infantry weapons and could carry them as fast as their squads could move.

The Minutemen however, had artillery, slower but effective heavy weapons of their own, they were better trained and had more of a rigid discipline in their ranks that the Gunners couldn't achieve through keeping their men in order using fear.

So in the twelve or so years Sanford had been in the Commonwealth neither faction had a means to finally eradicate the other, even though both wished they could, certainly a conflict of that caliber would decide the ruling party of Boston once and for all.

Not that, you know, any of that was Sanford's _place_ to try and speak out for, according to the Minutemen.

To be clear, the Minutemen accepted his help and not really much of his opinion, it was why Sanford dreaded working with them, they were pompous bastards who liked telling other people what to do because they believed they were Boston's new police force of the month.

They were a better alternative to the Brotherhood, surely, after all, hadn't Sanford been thinking that over? How horribly ignorant the Brotherhood was? Every Chapter of them? The Minutemen were assholes, but at least they weren't racists and supremacists who saw technology as more valuable than some other 'Less Essential' lives, whatever the hell that even meant...

And also, another plus, if we were in the department of comparisons, take this very moment for instance.

At least the Minutemen weren't bloodthirsty military robots sent by a ravening pack of murderous sleezebags to shoot the good guys and everyone they cared about. The problem was, even though the militia wasn't present this afternoon, there indeed was a robot that met these qualifications, that _was_ present.

Sanford and Nyx had followed the sounds of combat, which primarily consisted of breaking wood, gunshots from Laser weapons and Hancock's Plasma gun, the roar of flame and the breakage of stone.

They came across two houses divided by a dirt lane between them, and in this lane was a scene of absolute carnage.

Blast craters were everywhere, most of them still steaming, the ground had become blackened and so had the sides of both houses, which had been holed through, shot full of holes and scorched to high hell, a gash in the left home was as big as a car and belched an arm of flickering flames from inside.

Chunks of drab metal were lain in broken pieces about the chaos, there were cloven footprints everywhere, drag marks through the dirt, up ahead the sounds of a firefight on the move were heard, and Sanford and Nyx were forced to delay while simply absorbing the view before them from the sidewalk.

"...Wow." Was all Sanford muttered, he trotted out into the ruined dirt, and Nyx took a moment to follow carefully. "Ya' think Hancock took it overboard?"

"...That creature ALWAYS takes things overboard..." She grumbled, avoiding several craters that still were pulsating in their interiors from dying heat.

 ** _BmmmmMMmmm..._** -A fireball bloomed from behind a hill straight ahead, it meandered in the air up there for almost a story and then gradually dissipated for a dying column of black and dark gray.

Sanford, comically, was stilled in a glance upwards right as the plumage of flame highlighted his helmet amber for a quick second. He blinked a few times, and started jogging through the scorched mess around him.

"-That didn't look good!" He called back.

"...I'm sure he has unfortunately survived..." Nyx grumbled, noticeably moving with less effort.

If not for Sanford's persistence, the Deathclaw would have been tempted to abandon the effort of recovering the robot a year ago. It wasn't that she _hated_ the pile of screaming, animated scrap, she was merely… _disgusted_ , by being in his presence, at any given distance, on any given day.

…Rightly so, Hancock was not on her favorites list, and with the way he always blabbered and screamed at her and insulted her with the use of vulgarity and profanity, could you blame her?

The robot was doing the tango with something utterly ferocious, Sanford had a shocked gasp constantly leaving him- for it seemed every five steps they took there was even _more_ damage done to the environment –and it laid out a pretty easy trail right to the source.

A flipped car on the next road, smoke rising from the houses ahead, Sanford and Nyx breached another alleyway expecting the worst, and their fears were seemingly confirmed when one of the homes on the other side of the pavement bloomed, like a big, fat, fiery flower.

 ** _Bmmmmmmm!_** –The front of the house imploded, no exaggeration, in fact the entire wooden and plaster frame looked like a miniature vortex or a wormhole of sorts had started to suck the front porch _into_ the very heart of the building, before it popped like a flaming zit.

Sanford was almost tossed off his heels, he had to shield his helm with raised arms as wooden chunks and boards bounced around and sailed everywhere, Nyx mimicked the motion with a hiss of surprise, her tail curling behind her in trepidation.

"-HANCOCK-!" Sanford called out. "-Holy shit-!"

 _He did always say he'd go out with a BANG…_ Nyx wanted to say in the growing moments of silence.

"Han'!" Sanford drew his gun and his blade in separate grips, his boots clocked against the concrete as he sprinted for the flaming debris of the house. "I'm comin', Han'!"

"Monsieur', wait-!" Nyx tore after him.

 ** _SsssssSSSSSHHHKKK-!_** –And then this really terrible sound, like, _hissing_ , coming from right over their heads, stopped the heroes dead in their tracks.

 ** _Screechh-!_** –Sanford's boots kicked sparks as he ground to a halt.

 ** _-Phm!_** –"OOF-!" –and then Nyx's scaly breast butted into his back and shoulders.

They might have started bickering at each other like they usually did in such clumsy instances, but Sanford's gaze was pointed not at her elongated, serpentine face, but at the sunny day sky above, and Nyx similarly, had her snout pointed upwards to follow him.

A flaming, soot-trailing…. _Thing_ , was descending from above, and the black trail it left through the sky, actually held origin in the blasted remains of the house ahead. It arced high above, and now was curling down, straight for them.

Along with that hissing sound getting louder, Sanford heard _screaming_ , metallic tinged, rabid screaming, and it was getting louder too.

"…Sérieusement?" Nyx muttered.

"Yep." Sanford cringed. "He's falling from the sky."

"…AGAIN…" The Deathclaw's tongue slithered out from her chops as she blinked in the resulting irony. "You still will not let me scrap the usiner'."

"Not possible, girl."

"It was not a question…"

"….aaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH-!" **_CRRAACKCKKK!_** –The street plumed in a burst of flame and soot, with enough force that it caused Nyx's tail to flap behind her like a streamer caught in a rough breeze.

Sanford was shielding his helmed face again, and when he lowered his arms, none other than Hancock himself, lay not ruined and destroyed, or burnt to a crisp, but levitating in the middle of the road, doing a…. a strange set of movements…

"…Holy fuck…" Sanford muttered.

"I-Is…. Is he…. DANCING?" Nyx was awed.

"Christ."

"-HELL YEAH! All capital fuckin' letters! H. E. DOUBLE- L- YEAAHHHH! AH-HAHAHAHAHAHAAAA-! Take THAT BABY! That'll teach you to try and school- THE HAN'! AH-HAAA-! Eat my sprocket pump! And blow the engine coolant out your fuckin' Commie' hole! HA-!"

The deranged Mr. Gutsy was colored a near perfect black with all the scorch marks drawling across his drab hide, he bounced and fluttered- doing his, in quote- 'Jig' –over a blast crater in the street –and within its blackened, smoldering center, lay a smashed and twisted pile of scrap.

"For the record-!" Hancock revved his buzzsaw, stopped dancing and jabbed its blade into the mass of the crater. "-WE'RE THROUGH! I'm not about to soil MY image, dating some deranged, psychopath, oil-chugging, old lady muggin' BITCH! IT'S YOUR LOSS! YOURS! ALL YOUR-"

Hancock's screams of victory were cut short.

Smoke lifted off the robot's limbs and chassis everywhere as he spun around and faced his two companions, if the Mr. Gutsy possessed lungs- or pants, by his diluted passions –he would've offered an awkward cough in the silence, save for the hissing of the smoldering crater behind him.

"How long… HAVE THE TWO OF YOU BEEN STANDING THERE?!" Hancock belted.

"…Long enough." Sanford sighed. "I lost whatever comment I was about to say, it… it probably wasn't that good anyhow…"

"I feel a number of my brain cells have died." Nyx's eye twitched. "I should desire therapy."

"FUCKERS! How DARE you interfere in my private relationships! IT'S MY LIFE! AND IT'S MY FRIKKIN' MONEY! AND I WANT IT NOWWWWW-!"

"…What the hell happened?" Sanford shook his head, he shoved past his insane friend and gazed into the smoking crater. "What WAS that?"

"A TRAMP! Sent straight from Russia I'll fuckin' bet!" Hancock raised his flight level to peak over the man's shoulderplate. "Guess you could say I…. NAILED HER- AH-HAHAHAHAHAA-! HA-HA! HA!"

Inside the crater, pancaked, like a smashed bug, was a Gunner model Assualtron robot, with all its limbs snapped and shattered like toothpicks, its chest compressed and smashed, and its one eyed head dark with deactivation, sparks kicked and zapped from every breach in its form.

Sanford creased his lip, he stepped back from the carnage and looked at Hancock like he was crazy. Which, of course, he was.

"All that, for a freakin' Assaultron?" Sanford asked. "Really, man?"

"Oh COME ON! That was bad-assery' at its finest, sir!" Hancock defended. "I kicked her ass good! THROTTLED HER FACE! Stampeded on her egg-salad sandwich! I MEAT SLAPPED THE CANTANKEROUS, COMMIE' LOVIN' SONSOFBITCHES'!"

"You need to take a mother fucking pill."

"TWIRL YOUR TONGUE, ON LIZARD ANUS-!"

 ** _Thwak!_**

-Nyx backhanded the Mr. Gutsy, and he raggedly sailed somewhere off into the street's flank, rebounding off of something aluminum.

"Monsieur'," Nyx motioned with a knuckle. "What is that?"

"What's what?"

"That flashing, by the machine's head."

Sanford squinted and ran a scan with his armor systems.

There was a notable white light flickering on, and off, light and dark, by the back of the Assaultron's cranial, plated skull, and it wasn't from all the sparks.

The suit read the robot's systems, and the results it brought back were very interesting.

"…Help me get the body out of there," Sanford said suddenly. "Quickly."

"Why does this-?"

"I'll tell you later," Sanford waved her off. "Come on, this is important."

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-

He was trained firstly as a soldier, beyond and before all else, his purpose within the greater whole, had been to pick up a gun, and run in a group of other guys, and shoot at things his superiors deemed hostile to their order.

Before all else, before life had caught up with him, before the actions he had taken had done a full three-sixty and had spiraled back to bite him in the ass, before the constant war took his arm from him, and his woman, and his pride and…. a lot of other, God damned things….

-Before _all_ of that, since the near beginning, it felt like he had been bred and placed upon the Earth's surface with one purpose, and one purpose only, and that had been to be a _grunt_ , he was a number, and he gone through the first twenty years of his life completely accepting of that fact.

The chain of command however, would eventually catch up to him, it would eventually wound, undo, and then _make_ him.

For you see, Aliston Jeffrat- if you looked at him now, at this point –would resemble nothing in comparisons to a frail young boy, or a youth of innocence and awaiting prosperity, indeed, Aliston had been marred by not only age, but by the deformations his very pursued craft had permanently wrought into his very flesh.

War had grafted Aliston's body from head, to blistered toe, his lice ridden scalp was all but shaved, save for a burnt orange mohawk do making a strip nearly from the bridge of his teardrop nose to the back of his filthy neck, a thin little mustache curled over his scabby lips, and his eyes were mismatched, sunken in his grime covered face.

The left iris was white- the result of a grenade going off in his face six years ago –the left was a greenish hazel, his natural tint. The prior incident left scars that were lighter in tone than the rest of his tanned skin, so it looked like a million ghost razors had sliced and flecked his right cheek, jaw and temple.

Aliston Jeffrat had been a grunt since boyhood, it was the sort of- 'Martial Culture' –the Gunners had enjoyed throughout their existence, as the doctrine of the Great Military was what had structured their lifestyle and families for decades.

His old man had been a grunt, and so had his grandfather, and probably the one before that. He came from a line of soldiers, basic grunts, all he ever wanted to be when he grew up, was be a freaking soldier, and shoot people in the name of his creed, and get hopped on chems', and fuck the whores Old Whiskers brought into camp every once and awhile.

He was diseased, his arm had been blown off, the result of an officer he'd pissed off sending him into the meat grinder in _just the right_ zone to get hammered by a glancing .50 round. Ironically, that bullet had torn clean through his arm and had impacted in that same officer's forehead, killed the bastard instantly, took his _head_ off, a fair trade in Aliston's opinion.

That lead to a promotion, which lead to two things in his life he could thank the Minutemen for, despite his hatred of their guts.

Aliston was made an officer that day, he got a fancy new bionic arm, installed some nice toys on it, saw himself to the butchers they called doctors around these parts and had a few more squishy bits replaced with steel and synthetic.

The result became the towering creature that oversaw the same men he once was on level ground with, as a _grunt_. All these years later, his aspirations and goals, and where he was today, couldn't have been farther than where he was _now._

He had enjoyed success over his newfound career, the Militia feared him, his own men feared him, they called him- 'Jeffy the Rat' –some had even coined- 'Jeffy the Butcher' –and _that_ came from what he did to people who stood up to him.

That viciousness had channeled itself into an effective champion of the Gunners, and for that reason, when the Generals had agreed on the army's next course of action, they had overseen that it was _he_ who got first dibs on the orders.

But of course, someone had to raise their jackass hands and stop the ball, which was what- much to Aliston's shock and anger –his old mentor, Old Whiskers, wound up doing.

They called him Old Whiskers on account of the huge Viking beard the guy sported, Whiskers was as old as freaking dirt and somehow the man was still kicking and could rip your guts out with his teeth. They called Aliston the rat, but Old Whiskers was the officer in the west of Boston that actually fought like one.

Whiskers had sent his own detachment to deal with the targets the Generals had assigned- a group, a man and his pets –that had been royally fucking Gunner operations for the last few years, and as it would've figured, in Aliston's growing prestige, Whiskers' force was wiped out to the last man.

A pair of wounded survivors had staggered back home, talking about a- 'Screaming Robot' –a monster, and a man capable of killing twenty times his own number. Aliston did actually believe them, his years of underestimating people were behind him, but he still shot the two men dead anyway on account of how pissed off he was at his old mentor.

Old Whiskers had showed him the ropes, had pulled him from the muck, and now the old fuck was trying to take the glory, and Aliston wasn't about to have it, the Gunners were caving in on themselves, they didn't have the time or energy for such infighting.

"Ya' see 'em?" Aliston was becoming impatient, the servo joints bolted into the shoulder of his bionic arm were whirring back and forth quietly- a habit he had developed whenever he was bored –he kept moving the resonator joint back and force to cause it.

"Yeah," Stig, his lead scout, muttered through his black teeth. "Yeah I see 'em."

The scout was a wiry fellow, much thinner than Aliston, who could be described as hulking under his drab combat armor, the officer watched with his naked eyes, but Stig had a telescope, on his belly he was able to see nearly a mile away.

The man of this little group they were looking at was wearing Power Armor, and from what the intel they had on him said, it was equipped with pre-War custom scanners that allowed him to pick up life sigs' from a certain distance.

Aliston and Stig were probably a mile and a half away from where this- 'Sanford Tobs' –character was, they had been made enlightened to the Deathclaw, and the robot that orbited him wherever he went.

"What do we do?" Stig asked, his filthy face shaded by the dead tree the pair hid underneath.

"Don't shoot at 'em, that's for sure," Aliston growled. "Need more firepower."

"We gots it." Stig smiled. "We gots it."

"Whiskers, stickin' me in the back like this…" The officer shook his head, he flicked the cigarette he had between his lips away and stamped on the soot trailing butt when it landed in the dirt. "Anyone's killing that Tobs feller', it's gonna' be me."

"So what we do?" Stig persisted.

"Whiskers gave us the frame," Aliston said. "We'll just learn from the old bastard's mistakes."

"How we do that, Al'?"

"Heading back, get your shit together," The officer snapped. "Get your rifle too."

"Ole' _Betty?_ "

"We're gonna' need her later."

Sanford Tobs emerged from a smoking crater of wreckage far off in the distance- the two Gunners were in the advantage of being atop a hill –in his armored arms he carried the bundled wreck of the last robotic platform the strikeforce had.

The Generals had ordered a one man war, in that the Gunners were going to erase a key piece on the chessboard that worked for nobody but himself, and Sanford Tobs was about to be swept up in a great game of arms.

While Aliston and his own mob would begin to prepare their own take at an ambush, news was spreading of Old Whiskers, the Warlord of the West, and his own army of Gunner personnel gearing up to take on the same mission.

Where Sanford had merely been doing what he viewed as just and right, he now had called upon himself the wrath of yet another organized faction in the Wasteland, and only the coming weeks would tell what the outcome would ultimately turn out to be.

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-


	6. Chapter 6

_**I drew a 1967 Camaro Convertible and it came out really awesome, go check it out on Deviantart, and guess what? I've sold nearly twenty copies of my novella so far, cool right? It's a start. So this chapter has a rather adult scene in it, I just felt I should bring it up in the note section because of the sensitive nature of it for this story.**_

 _ **I have to understand that I've written a story longer than several novels with build up to Sanford and Nyx eventually having a more intimate relationship, and, seeing as if you browse the majority of stories on the internet featuring such strange romance pairings, your search for something non-erotic will be hard pressed, SO, I've tried to keep that border strong, my goal here was never to write nonsense like pornographic content or erotica, stories revolving around such in my opinion are tasteless, call that what you will.**_

 _ **So, read what I got, see how it flows for you, I realize you might not be a member of the crowd that has a fancy for the weird aspect of the types of romance pairings I have in my stories, I've done my best to make something so particular as acceptable as possible to a general audience of adult level literature, again, call that what you will, hope it isn't too gross for you.**_

 _ **In other news, I have a new weekly poll on my profile, I'll change the question and choices every week, give it a shot**_

 _ **Have an awesome-sauce day**_

 _ **~Don**_

 **Chapter 6**

 **Manhunt**

* * *

It had become enough of a pain to cart the destroyed remains of Hancock's metallic, mechanical victim- that Sanford had sought out other options for his tired arms –for even with the X-01's support of his muscular system, the wreck's several hundred pound weight was dragging him down horribly.

Sanford felt like a wimp, after all, without the suit a year ago, he had made it pretty common to carry nearly fifty or sixty pounds of gear with him wherever he went, and that had been _without_ the X-01 supporting him.

He wasn't weak by far, certainly not built like a Super Mutant either, but the robot shouldn't have given him such a hard time in his own eyes.

The young man tried to pawn the wreckage off on Nyx, but the Deathclaw had responded to his pleading query with a very convincing, and wordless argument, for the reptile had remained quite silent, and had given him this- 'Stink Eye' –of sorts, a cold expression on her scaly face, and that had shut him up.

Eventually, Sanford just tossed the wrecked Assaultron at Hancock, and let the screaming, cursing robot do all the lifting by, primarily, _dragging_ it down the road behind them.

"-I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU FOR THIS!" Hancock ranted, tugging at the screeching mound of scorched metal. "DO I LOOK LIKE SOME FUCKIN' ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT?! MANUAL LABOR IS FOR CHUMPS!"

"Then you should fit this criteria NICELY _,_ usiner'." Nyx smiled with venom.

"What she said." Sanford chuckled.

"FUCK YOU ALL!"

"Less screaming, Han', more pulling."

"I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE! REVENGE I TELL YOU! REVENNGGGGGEEE-!"

It was amazing no monsters attacked them on the road home, after all, Hancock's screaming would've attracted a Yao Guai bear from fifteen miles away had the animal been present. It seemed Boston was becoming quieter as the days rolled by.

Eventually, Sanford and Hancock worked together to drag the clattering mess of the Assaultron's mangled body into the garage of the Red Rocket Gas Station, Sanford had his gauntlets under the shoulders, and Hancock used his claw to keep the legs suspended.

Right as Sanford was thinking of how miraculous it was for the Assaultron's limbs to stay attached after all the trauma done to them, the Assaultron's leg snapped off at the thigh with a bunching of sparks, and rattled on the concrete floor.

"Holy shaven Asian-man testicles!" Hancock cried. "Baby-cakes! Your sexy-ass leg just got amputated!"

"Pretty certain she can't-" Sanford grunted, **_CRlckclk…_** -The robot spread out on the work table with a final lift. "-HEAR you."

"BAH! Nobody asked you!" Hancock snapped. "Now… LET'S DO SOME SURGERY! AH-HAHAHAHAHA-AAAA!"

"Jesus Christ," Sanford grit his teeth, sliding open a few tiny drawers to find the right tools. "Shut UP."

"MAKE ME, YOU ASS-CRACK-PICKIN' BABOON!"

"Screeching microwave."

"Ball-strokin' primate!"

"Transformer wannabe'."

"Alligator porker!"

"-Oh jeez'- C'MON, Han'," Sanford drew back with his arms up. "Don't you ever wonder WHY Nyx throws you through walls sometimes?"

"That ain't the HALF of it!" Hancock cackled, his thruster carrying him up in a hop of amusement. "Lizard-Cakes used me to flatten the front of a pickup once! She's nothin' but a Nazi-induced bio-experiment gone wrong in some fucked up little kid's basement, whose father was a crossbreed between a fat woman and a disgruntled Russian businessman!"

"…W-What… what the hell did you just even say…? –No, you know what, I dunno'." Sanford shook his head.

"Don't gimme' that! What's the problem THIS TIME?"

"Han', look," Sanford tugged out a tiny pair of tongs and a sharp wire-cutter, he clattered the implements on the table beside the sparking wreck of the Assaultron, sprawled like a cadaver ready for autopsy before them on the bench. "It bothers her, and, frankly, it bothers me too, when you bring it up."

Understand, that as a _machine_ , no matter how much Hancock relented other people saying such- everything Sanford was saying to him was a load of crap –who cared about all that? It wasn't like Hancock didn't accept that he was a freak who had a hard on for a seven foot tall iguana that could talk.

"You know what this thing is?" Sanford picked up the tongs and jabbed them at the back of the Assaultron's head.

"…Hmmmm…" Hancock levitated closer. "…A deranged bitch!"

"No, you idiot," Sanford rolled his eyes. "The CHIP, do you see the chip? The one that was GLOWING before? Really?"

"Thought it was a bad scalp-rash or something, sir."

"…Robots don't get rashes."

"BUT YOU FILTHY MONKEYS SURE AS SHIT DO! AHAHA-AHHAAA!"

"…You're oughtta' your gourd, man."

"I'M FUCKED UP! LOVE ME!"

"Lemme' just get in here, and… yank… this out…" Sanford gripped the Assaultron's head, it creaked and sparked as he turned it upwards, and angled the teeth of the tongs to the base of its neck. The metal was still hot, Sanford could feel that even through the fingers of the X-01. "So, Han', yes, I guess this thing IS a deranged bitch in a sense, but that chip, is a memory batch, your throttling this thing's head must've exposed it."

"That's my game, sir!" Hancock laughed. "Kill 'em, bag 'em, burn the corpses!"

"Bagging, huh?"

"Not literally, ya' frikkin' killjoy!"

The tongs clenched over the top of the batch chip- it sparked in response –earning a startled hiss from the young man as he struggled to relieve the robot of the part.

It took a few tugs, and Sanford's back was starting to hurt because of how he was hunched over watching his progress, but eventually the chip gave way, it popped out, and his arm jerked back with the tongs victoriously grasping their quarry.

 ** _Clunk!_** –It made a thick noise when the chip snapped out.

"-Got it!" Sanford smiled. "Still in one piece too."

"What's all this about, sir?" Hancock followed his friend as Sanford turned and brought the chip towards a scavenged console in the corner of the garage, the thin one, with wires draping like vines all over the wall and floor around it.

"This is a MEMORY CHIP, Han'," Sanford brandished the chip at him. "Maybe we can find out who sent those guys to kill us."

"….Waitaminute…. taking a moment longer to process-GASSSPPP-! You sir, are a GENIUS! Einstein-level! BIG-BRAIN-BART! Smarts-Alla'-Hot-!"

"-Focus." Sanford frowned.

"-B-But-!"

"Focus."

"….EAT ME!"

The chip fit right into a port on the side of the monitor's keyboard, suspended by a homemade tripod from the concrete floor of the garage, Sanford hunched over the tiny monitor and typed in a few lines of code.

"…Hopefully the Gunners aren't too good with firewalls…"

"Those Diaper-Wearin' Dicksuckers? BAH! They wouldn't know tech if it grew wings and feathers, flew overhead and shit on their faces!"

"What's wrong with you?"

"I told ya' to install a printer so I can print the list out for ya'!"

"Yeah, that's not happening."

"A fax machine?"

"Nope."

"What about a telephone! I can install my own ringtones, and hook up to your helmet, and harass you all the time by sending you text-messages reading- SANFFOOORRRDDDDD –all frikkin' day and night! And when you get annoyed and block me, I'll turn into a deranged serial-stalker, find ya', and FUCK UP YOUR FACE! And then-!"

-Sanford had stopped typing and was looking at the robot silently.

"…" Hancock drew back, as if appalled by the way his companion was reacting to his rants. "DON'T GIMME' THAT LOOK, YOU FUCKIN' GORILLA!"

"If you choose to so meddle with the usiner's inner workings, mon ami'," Nyx appeared in the doorframe to the interior of the station house. "Perhaps you shouldn't install anything, but remove whatever he uses to SPEAK."

"HEY! Take your smart-aleck attitude and shove it up your alligator ass!" Hancock screamed, moving for the doorway with vicious intent.

"If there is anything to be SHOVED, it will be my fist into your face." The Deathclaw snorted, leaning her shoulder against the frame to her flank, it looked like she had to stuff herself through it to join the conversation.

"Good news, bitch! I DON'T HAVE A FACE! AH-HAHAHAHAHAHA-HAAAA-!"

"Can you both, like, shut up?" Sanford snapped over his shoulder.

 ** _Cling-….ring-ring!_** –A wrench flew out and rebounded off his armor's back, rattled away on the floor. Sanford wheeled around with a look of infuriation beneath his helmet.

Nyx's first reaction was to jab a finger at Hancock, and Han' similarly pointed his buzzsaw at her.

"Don't you both have, I dunno', ANY desire to know who sent those guys to shoot us?"

"It was the Gunners," Nyx shrugged. "Fin de l'histoire', what else is there to know?"

"You wouldn't want a specific person? Or group?" Sanford asked.

"Doesn't make a difference to- THE HAN' –the Han' kills with abandon and without prejudice!" Hancock proclaimed. "-In the name of all that is Democratic, OR DEEP FRIED IN HERSHEY'S CHOCOLATE!"

"…Qu'est ce qui ne vas pas chez toi?" Nyx blinked.

"IN ENGLISH, YOU SCALY-WEEABOO!"

"What is WRONG with you?"

"Oh so much! AH-HAHAHAAAA!"

Sanford grumbled under his breath as his companions continued to bicker, he tapped a few more keys, ran a few override sweeps, and eventually the screen swept green, and then drab, and came alive with a few rows of jumbled text.

The man- now intrigued –scrolled through a handful of lines with interest, he realized that they were voice recordings, the actual sound bites in the Assaultron's processing unit must have been destroyed in the fight with Hancock.

Isolating a particular sentence, Sanford saw that each line was labeled on the end for receiving, and transmitting, basically who was talking and who was listening in each line. One tag read- UNIT-PRIM –which Sanford understood as the Assaultron itself.

The robots designed by the United States Military during the War could respond to radio chatter like human operators, and just like radio relay stations and the Signal Corps kept records of all transmissions and conversations, robots had storage dumps where all radio chatter they engaged in was copied and kept for logistics records.

Sanford had cracked a few of these dumps open in the past, and every time, it seemed the Army designation for the robot partaking in the messages was labeled- 'UNIT-PRIM' –so that meant that the Gunners hadn't erased this function.

After all, if Sanford hadn't come from a military family, and hadn't been around in the Old World, how would he have known to look for these tags in the first place? Seemed the Gunners weren't concerned about individual exceptions, and he couldn't blame them, it was resource effective to stay towards standardization, even if it wasn't your own doctrine.

The other label, however, was very, _very_ interesting.

This label was called- WHISKEY –and that could've meant a whole plethora of things.

It could've dated back to the Army, after all, Whiskey was an old U.S. military alphabetical term, but it also could've been something revolving around the Gunners, and the names of their primary leaders had remained mostly unknown to him for years.

Sanford had always caused them trouble, and his cooperation with the Militia certainly did not help his reputation with the Gunners, but it seemed now that the Gunners were specifically targeting him, and that was much more frightening than he would've liked to admit.

It had been pretty scary when the Institute had targeted him, or that task force the Enclave had sent- memories particularly stemmed towards the ferocity of their Superintendent, who had escaped –but the Gunners were closer to home, so to speak, it was more high stakes.

But these labels were more pressing, Sanford needed to tackle big problems one pebble at a time, if you will, only way to do it and keep your sanity.

 **WHISKEY-** _Grid coor' 56-900, two miles east of the big hill_

-The first tag read.

 **PRIM-UNIT-** _Acknowledged, officer organizing unit, moving shortly_

 **WHISKEY-** _Get it done quickly, orders of General Alliston are VOID, spell it out, V O I D, you listen to me_

 **PRIM-UNIT-** _56-900 is in General Alliston's sphere of unit influence, intervention from Greenpoint possible_

 **WHISKEY-** _Don't care, Alliston's commands are void, hit this Tobs fellow, kill him, return to Fort_

 **PRIM-UNIT-** _Specific instructions for Enclave Subject?_

 **WHISKEY-** _Make it interesting, take it alive if you can, bring a body if that doesn't work out, or send for a heavy lift team, I'll follow up_

 **UNIT-PRIM-** _As you wish, General, unit moving_

…General Alliston… huh. And who the hell was _Whiskey?_ That deserved some investigation.

Though while Sanford didn't prefer to admit his uncertainty on the whole thing, he did admit willingly that he had little to no clue how to even _begin_ looking into the matter.

The Gunners were obscure, they hid things about their military structure and even their society pretty well, and their years as sellswords in the Commonwealth were beginning to wane in favor for isolationism.

The Minutemen didn't know very much about them either, and the two had been unofficially at war for decades. Though Sanford imagined that the Militia probably knew the names of notable officers and commanders.

Perhaps that would be a change of pace, Sanford Tobs asking the _Minutemen_ for help, not the other way around, he couldn't picture the Militia denying him after all the shit he'd been through for them. But even so, what would he even do with that knowledge?

If he found out who in the Gunners was targeting him, wouldn't he have to break that veil of conformity he and Nyx and Hancock had been enjoying to some degree? Wouldn't that bring something around, something called…. _Another adventure_?

Sanford was stilled over the keyboard for the console as he thought of this.

…Wasn't that, kind of, already happening though?

The Gunners had repeated this offense before, and if anything the assaults on him and the only family he had would keep getting worse. So that meant that Sanford could either continue to do what he had been doing- which was basically carry on with life and wait for the ambushes to come and go –or, he could've found and _solved_ the problem at the head, particularly by removing some else's.

Killing a Gunner General sounded deeply game changing, how would he even do something of that caliber? Did the threat today call for such a task?

Sanford didn't really know, but the attempt made on their lives forced him to question it. He'd mull on it, he figured, mull on it for a day, figure out what to do, but oh how he did not realize the _time_ that would cost him.

That would be soon revealed, and he wasn't going to like it.

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-

Sometimes as the days kept going on and on, sometimes it became hard to tell when one ended and another began. Sometimes, it was just darkness, than light, darkness, light, and so on and so forth.

The routine had always been repetitive, scavenge ruins, peak around the fringes of Boston City, every other week they'd journey to Diamond or Goodnieghbor to restock on supplies they couldn't find, trade for caps, check up on friends and connections, and leave poor Nyx back at the station to stew, alone.

Sanford had been alive for, what, twenty something years? He didn't remember his exact age, not even Hancock did, and the robot could literally process and record things like a machine, and Sanford's age was still lost to the sands of time.

He was always asking the same questions, dealing with the same trauma in his mind, debating what was right for him to do and wrong, and relatively recently, this tornado of raw emotion brought unto him by _Nyx_ , had only swelled the impact it all had on his body.

Sanford would never admit to any but himself- maybe, with a bit of convincing, he'd tell Han' –but over the last few months his mood had been feeling…. Well, _dimmer._

What he meant by that was, some of the things he had seen and done, were just particularly bothering him more than they usually did, and, granted, Sanford had seen a _lot_ of shit, some really horrible shit too, and it always had been there shadowing him, there was no denying it.

But sometimes the stress it brought out was heavier than average, it particularly became exacerbated whenever he was forced to _kill_ , and as was the world he lived in, killing was an essential part of survival, because if you didn't kill, something else would kill _you_.

Killing monsters, killing animals, that was easier for his mind to _cope with_ in a sense, because he deemed it more necessary to the situations, one killed the charging predator to save his own hide, that was self defense.

But whatever made that different when it came to killing _people_ for him, always weighed terribly upon his head. Sanford had survived the Wasteland for almost _twelve years_ , and to take in the depth of that you had to think about it long term.

That firefight they had been engaged in, the booby-trap, the machine gun nest, the flanking movements and the brutal house-to-house fighting, the sweeping of the dunes and woodlands, watching for monsters and abominations hiding in the dark, that was all _one day._

Picture that. There were three hundred and sixty five days in a year.

Hundreds, _thousands_ of days of repeating the same hardships, going through hell just to eat and drink, just to keep a place to sleep.

Sanford had killed a lot of fellow human beings, and, hell, he'd killed them in all kinds of creative and terrible ways, it was an art of _killing_ , wrenching life from a living vessel, it was always messy, and awful, and it left a pit as worse as defeat even when victory should have been tasted.

Sanford didn't understand all of it, because the people he killed were, by God, they were _horrendous_ examples, the lowest humanity could go, Sanford was no murderer, he didn't shoot at innocent people or rob merchants, he killed marauders, thieves, _real_ murderers, he killed when he _had_ to.

But if he killed when he had to, why did it always feel so awful? He was cleaning the gene-pool for Christ's sake, why did that not sit well with his mind? Why did it plague him?

Sometimes Sanford would get caught up in that, he'd get a spike of emotion, you know, the feeling of when you had suppressed something bad in your conscience and something would come out, and remind you of it, and a falling pit of anguish, confusion, and anxiety would bury itself in your stomach and rot.

There were times where Sanford Tobs, the guy who had defeated the Institute, kicked the Enclave's shiny, metallic ass, and had dealt with creatures fifty times his size, would sit down, and feel the need to release his pent in emotions, by just _crying_.

How did _that_ even make sense? He was supposed to be staying strong for the people around him, he didn't have the time, or, or the _pride_ to sit down and cry like a baby.

But he wanted to on bad days.

So later that day, when he finally had some free time to himself, that was what he did, he sat down and felt terrible for himself.

Sanford Tobs had a tight expression on his face- what from all the stress –and he looked off into the shadows of the rolling, woodland hills surrounding the Red Rocket.

Sitting outside the walls in the growing twilight, the sentry guns rotating on the station's roofs whined nearby quietly, and what few insects were left on this scorched planet were chirping inconsistently, and far off, stars were beginning to speckle to tan shaded blackness above.

Even ten feet from his own freaking house he had a gun with him, his old SMG, the gun that had lasted him a good while before he switched to the Laser Rifle, the custom gun that had pulled him out of every hardship over the last year.

Sanford kept the gun away from him, on the ground by his hip, he leant away from it like it was something revolting trying to touch him.

He watched the night sky, his heart heavy.

He thought about his parents, how he had talked to them, what they had done, what _he_ had done. It was safe to say that in combination with the basic trauma he had been scarred with, he wasn't feeling so hot tonight.

 _Lots of shit,_ Sanford deduced. _Just an evening for lots of shit… Like I needed that…_

The dirt quietly thudded behind him a few times, presenting fate's response to his mulling.

He grinned when the ground sifted and, something much larger than he sat beside him, and dispelled a whimsical exhale from greater, stronger lungs, tinged with a bit of a hiss.

"Are you feeling well, monsieur'?" Nyx's voice was like a hand of velvet, piercing the disturbances, grounding him to something better.

"…Not so much." Sanford shrugged, he didn't look over at her, he was… _afraid_ , of looking at her, afraid she'd see. "You know the drill, it's, uhm… another bout, I'll get over it, girl."

Something cold and smooth- sharp too –pricked the bottom of his chin, Nyx used one finger to turn him towards her, her yellow eyes conduits of roaring fire in the shade of Boston's lonely dusk.

The Deathclaw had to hunch over to lean to his level, her horns almost bumped his forehead, and her long, fang riddled chops were curled in the best smile she could offer.

"You can tell me anything, mon cher', you know this."

"Tell you anything?" Sanford lightly removed his chin from her touch. "What's there to tell, Nyx? I probably have some screwed up… THING wrong with me after all this time, I dunno' what it is, or how it works, but it… just, don't mind me."

"I'll always be mindful of you," She rumbled in amusement. "It's difficult _not_ to be after- 'All this time' –mon cher'."

"Huh."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Mm."

"Really, it's nothing."

"Mm."

"….Is that all you can say?" Sanford snickered. "-MM-what a noise."

"Mm?"

"Mmmmm."

"Mm."

"MMMMMMmmmmm."

"Mm."

"….That's your trademark, I'll give ya' that," The young man nodded. "I can't get that same ring to it."

"Sanford," Nyx's horns butted into his back. "Tell me what is bothering you."

"Nyx, you know what's bothering me." Sanford frowned, he leaned back on his palms. "I can't explain it, and I kinda' don't want to either."

"…Fine." She changed the subject. "What did you find in that chip?"

"That some General in the Gunners wants us dead, you know, nothing important." Sanford shrugged.

"You want to find him and kill him, don't you, monsieur'?"

"Yeah."

"You know I would go with you even if you asked me not to."

"Was that seriously a question?"

"Non'." Nyx butted him again. "Tu n'as pas le choix."

"Quit it," Sanford shoved one of her horns. "Those things are sharp."

"It is a sign of affection," She stated with a raised brow. "You wouldn't… _reject_ that, would you?"

"No!" He defended.

"I am just joking."

"Oh, good, you… you freaked me out for a second." He reached up and dusted his fingers over the same horn again. "So, what, bumping people with your horns is like…. What? In human norms?"

"I believe the equivalent of an embrace, or a sensual touch." She blinked.

"Wait a sec'- a _sensual touch_ –hold on," Sanford laughed, he spiraled around and sat to face her. "Define a _sensual touch_ , Nyx."

"…Is that… bad?"

"Nonono-! I'm just interested."

"…A… A _sensual_ touch, Sanford, I'm not sure how else to elaborate, ou pour' expliquer'…"

"So, what? You're _horny?_ Get it?"

" _Non'_ you piggish oaf!" She swatted his prying hands away with a giggle.

"…Oof." Sanford sat back. " _Piggish_ , wow."

"Stop that, I did not mean it in such a way!"

"I thought you came out here to make me feel better," Sanford grinned. "Holy crap, you're mean, we should reinstate _Angrypants_ as your name again."

"Comme vous le souhaitez'," She purred. "What would I do if I were _human?_ "

"In hopes of making me feel better, or getting some action?"

"SANFORD~!" She bubbled. "Arrete' ca'! This instant!"

"Well, if one were to soothe someone feeling in the crapper, like myself, I dunno', I mean, a hug, a pat on the back…"

Nyx reached over and tapped her large palm against his back twice, making him jolt with laughter each time.

"-Now if one were to approach someone seeking ACTION…"

"Action, monsieur'?" Nyx smiled toothily. "Of what nature?"

"Humans would get closer, they'd have their faces to each other, and their hands would wander, and…" Sanford saw a hazy look in her eyes, his mouth became very slippery. "…a-and, uhm…"

"Mm?" Her horns bypassed each side of his head, their foreheads compressed.

"…a-and it would… y-you know, sort of look a bit like this." Sanford quivered. "-I-I'm sorry, I'm a one-man earthquake at the end of the day, I…."

"Maybe, mon cher', the less we THINK about it," Nyx purred. "The more things will run their course for both of us."

Sanford brought his hands to either side of her head, the tip of her mouth and his lips merged in a quiet and drawn union, broken by quiet hissing breaths from their noses.

"…T-That helped…" Sanford smiled cheaply. "I'm sorry about the s-shaking, it's…"

"What would a human do NEXT _?_ " She supported.

"…This is, just, it's different with everybody."

"What would YOU do next, mon cher'?"

"…I-I would…" Sanford blinked, and a sudden feeling of bravery overcame him. "-I would do THIS, carefully."

Their mouths rekindled, the Deathclaw's heavy eyes became hard to keep open, their bodies flowed like two rivers, one defying gravity and running over the other, Nyx's larger back, her spines, started to teeter and fall backwards.

The descent with which Sanford pressed forwards saw his chest to hers, his arms craned over her collar, and his hands supported her shoulders, the reptile folded back like a recliner, her tail snapped out from getting caught under her rump, she was on her back and Sanford worked his feet over her thighs and on either side of her wide hips.

The process proceeded much more smoothly than Sanford would've initially given it credit for, he had to admit.

Nyx's hands cupped over each other centered his back, she was tugging him into her, the force was strong enough that if his mind wasn't so drunk on excitement, it would've been concerning. Granted, Nyx was not so hindered from such a carnal act as he was, because she wasn't wearing _clothes_ , so Sanford got even _braver_ , and his left hand slid down her jaw, to her chest, and kept going.

Their mingled oral cavities became so in tune after a moment that they each were able to flex their mandibles- an effective practice session of, ironically _French_ kissing –which this joke would later amuse Sanford to no end.

Nyx gave off a sound that in the year and a half he had known her, he had never, ever heard _come_ from her before. It was a vulnerable sound, Nyx would've gifted no other living being in the universe it besides him.

It wasn't necessarily a _moan_ or some dramatic word like that, but it was a vocal discharge, a cry from a sudden tsunami of stirring physical sensations, it had become too much to contain, the Deathclaw was experiencing a part of herself that had been locked away by suppressed hormones over a lifetime of solitude.

Sanford's palm and his fingers slid all the way down and over her curvaceous, scaly belly, and then, they started getting lower, and lower, and… he was forced to stop.

Sanford decoupled their mouths, he opened his eyes and looked down at her, his face sweaty, strained, as was hers.

Nyx knew why he had stopped, she angled her head down and peered between his torso and her tummy, and she settled back with shakes of her own, she blinked up at him.

"…H-How do I… ASK this…" Sanford faulted for brief awkwardness. "…M-May I?'

"…Do humans normally… TOUCH it…?" She asked.

"…I mean, YEAH, but, NO, no too, I…? I thought…. Y-Ya' know instead of… instead of just DELVING IN, I'd…"

"But it is so... DIRTY…" Nyx cupped a set of fingers over her snout. " _Oh mon'._ " –She muffled.

"…So, maybe, instead-"

"N-Non', non'," She shook her head. "You may, I trust you."

"…A-Alright, so…" Sanford offered a tiny, quiet prayer, and then continued moving down with his hand, and eventually, the top center of his palm brushed a sort of pylon, a breakage in a surrounding cup of smooth scales, a center, like the iris of a snake's eye.

Nyx hiccupped at the touch.

Sanford stopped what he was doing, and he gazed down between each of them at the organ he was making contact with. He reformed the position of his fingers, and he lightly stroked them from the organ's top, to its bottom with a graze made with the weight of a cloud, fascinated entirely by the experience.

Nyx's jaws parted, he felt washed steam brush past his face and his neck, her spined tail curled to and fro ahead of her and behind him.

He looked back at her face.

She seemed… she seemed _afraid._ That was relieving, actually, because he was afraid too, and he thought for a moment that it was _only_ him.

"…N-Nyx," He said lowly, he removed his hand, and he let up on some of the weight he put on her chest. "…I don't think-"

"We should turn in for the evening," She reasoned quickly, avoiding his gaze. "Aller au lit', oui', yes…"

Sanford stepped over and off of her, the Deathclaw's scales hissed against the ground, she stood up- a head taller than him still –and brushed herself off, keeping her legs tighter together than normal.

"…I-I…" Now it was _her_ turn to stutter. Nyx lowered herself and kissed him one last time, before the flustered reptile spun round and retreated back to the station with speed, her tail swaying behind her in the darkness. "…Je t'aime'…"

"…Y-Yeah, yep," Sanford rubbed the back of his head. "…I-It isn't…"

"It was not the right time," She chimed. "It doesn't mean I…"

"I know, I know."

"PLEASE know," She stopped for a second. "…Je t'aime'."

"…I love you too." Sanford sat back down on the ground, and instead of watching the stars, he watched her go. "I'm staying out here for a bit longer, I'll be in soon."

"Oui', please."

The wooden gate to the station remained ajar, but she had long passed through it.

Now Sanford returned to the stars, where they beamed back at him in the darkness, perhaps disappointed in him.

-0-0-0-0-0-


	7. A Message to my Readers

_**So I'm sure there are at least a few people who have opened this webpage expecting an update, or something, after such a long period of time, and I'm sure many of you will be disappointed, angry, upset, and I just want to start this message out by saying, that's completely understandable, and I'm not holding you at fault for such, if you do indeed feel that way.**_

 _ **I don't know if anyone who read about my serious car accident awhile back is reading this post now, but I'm sure you might recall a note that I added at the end of my long, arduous message, which was- 'I'll never take up another chapter slot for just an update notification ever again' -well, I guess I lied, because I'm doing it again, today, this evening, because I feel like I should, for anyone that may give a hoot.**_

 ** _If you'll allow me a moment to express a few things to you, as my reader, whether you're just tuning into my work for the first time- (because I know updates bump these stories to the top of their respective lists) -or if you've been reading my stuff, whether it was once, twice, for a few weeks, months, and I know some people have reading my work since at least 2014, so, what, three/four years?_**

 ** _-If you'll lend me your device screen for just a moment- (I'm tempted to ask- LEND ME THOU' EAR'! -but, you know, not really applicable, Lol) -I'd like to inform you, tell you, discuss with you a few things that have been happening with me lately._**

 ** _So again, I write this as a creator to you, as the reader, because by definition, if you've endorsed my work, whether you've just glanced at it, or if you've taken the time to favorite, follow, or critique it, you deserve the clarity of knowing that I will continue to provide for your continued entertainment, and in this quest, I must confess, on Fanfiction, home to almost several thousand people who have graciously taken the time to support me in my dire hours of creative ironing and development... I have, well, kind of failed at that._**

 ** _I don't know exactly how many months it's been, but it's been a long time, I have no doubts many people have moved on to doing their own things or supporting other hobbies, each day the number of my readers that I can reach on here with this message I believe decreases, but I feel like I need to discuss it with however many of you I can reach anyhow, so, here I am. :)_**

 ** _I'm putting this message up here for a number of reasons, I don't want to just up and vanish, and I most certainly don't want people to think I've just disregarded my work on here, people's time they've taken to talk with me and give me feedback, and the progress I've made on this site with my audience._**

 ** _Beside that, I also want to tell you about WHY I haven't been updating, and why I've basically let my traffic on here and even on some of my other sites dry up, if you're willing to hear it._**

 ** _Assuming you're still reading this, and haven't clicked your BACK or X buttons out of boredom or annoyance, let me express an explanation to you, because you deserve one._**

 ** _So I've mentioned it fleetingly to some folks on this site that is not my only creative outlet, it is a piece of my attempts to market myself and create a social media outlet, with which I provide material in the interest of trying to construct my brand. In combination of college, and a freelance job, my time to commit to my online audience is limited many days, but that isn't the only reason I've gone dark for so long._**

 ** _I'll be honest and tell you something, my mind just sometimes shifts, and what I mean by that is, sometimes I have projects, I'll work on them for months, and sometimes YEARS even, and then they'll just- POOF! -stop working, I'll lose my creative grasp, or my drive, or both, and things that I've put a lot of effort into literally just cease to continue, it's like if someone built a road for thousands of miles, and then just abruptly had it halt before they reached their destination endpoint._**

 ** _I guess it's kind of like writer's block, but a little more serious. If you've read my material on this site, you'll probably know this all too well, because both the sequels to the stories I've written on here remain incomplete, even years after I devised the ideas, Camera Angles 2 and Worse than 2 Pairs of Handcuffs, being the prime examples._**

 ** _In combination with my college work and my freelance work, my creative energy has been focused on OTHER things creative, and I'd like to tell you about them, as many of you as I can, any way._**

 ** _For roughly five/six years, I've been developing this world of mine, it's not a Fanfiction world, or an alternate universe of someone else's story, it's a world that I have literally poured my blood, sweat and tears into, and even though it's been taking me away from other creative passions for the last few years, I'm extremely proud of its conception._**

 ** _I have been toiling- (sometimes until extremely late hours for seven days a week) -over a story that I plan on elevating to the same level as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, there, I said it. Call me crazy, call my excuse cheap if you will, but this universe I've been developing is a prime reason I've neglected to keep my Fanfiction media outlet lively._**

 ** _Doubly, in addition to all of THAT, I have also been working hard to set up a larger social media platform, so I know some of you have looked at that little Blog page thing that I've set up, and some of you said it was really neat, and I'm sure several thought it was boring, and everything inbetween._**

 ** _I don't want you to think I've made this update post to simply advertise to you, because, I'm not trying to insult you, I'm trying to discuss with you WHY I haven't been updating, why I haven't been active with stories that I've gotten a lot of good people to look at and follow, and WHY I've been neglecting an entire audience base on my network, which is YOU._**

 ** _The universe's name is- 'Heroes of Crux' -it is a multi-arc fantasy epic, and I must confess that many of the things you may or may not have been with me in my development of throughout my writing here on FF, have all been PRACTICE, and evolution, in my efforts to train myself and learn the proper skillsets I need to complete and market this work of mine._**

 ** _-Again, I'm not trying to advertise to you, but to give you an idea of WHY my time has been so eagerly sapped away, I will relent to you that Heroes of Crux is MASSIVE, and my work to establish a better looking Blog, my Twitter and Tumblr accounts, and my P treon and Deviantart accounts, alongside it, have taken away from my ability to entertain you and provide content for you here._**

 ** _Heroes of Crux currently sports a planet and several planes of reality, there are nearly forty languages that I have documented and crafted from scratch separately and have made words and idioms for, there are six massive continents, each thousands of miles long and wide, there are made up ethnic groups of humans, and even non-humans, there are Gods, Anti-Gods, Demons, monsters, kingdoms and factions, all with made up names, made up cultures, origins, you name it._**

 ** _In my efforts to create this universe, I've also been crafting the NOVELS to go along with it, and THAT'S where the real meat of my effort has gone into._**

 ** _One novel is done, I'm currently editing and revamping it, it's 270,000 words long, with 62 Chapters, I'm a quarter of the way done with the next book, which is currently 50,000 words long, with 10 Chapters._**

 ** _I've also been obsessively working towards improving my ability to provide you with visual work, I've expended several sketchbooks and Photoshop pictures working towards drawing characters, places and things._**

 ** _So to give you a brief rundown, and a simple and final few statements:_**

 ** _-0-_**

 ** _1- I haven't been considerate of the people who have taken the time and effort to follow me on this site, and for that I offer my express apologies, it was never my intent to just leave people in the dust, for that, I hope you can forgive me_**

 ** _2- My novels, they're huge, and they require a lot of attention, like the longer stories on here that I've written. One is complete, one is a quarter of the way done._**

 ** _3- Creating lore for my universe and what I have gradually been coming to consider my life's work. Heroes of Crux sports made up languages, cultures, wars, nations, geography and planar nets._**

 ** _4- I've been working at drawing. I've been drawing all sorts of things if you want to look at them, tanks, cars, planes, characters from HoC, and- (ironically, considering the material I've created on here) -naked dragon chicks, go figure on that last bit, Lol._**

 ** _5- I've revamped my social media platform in an effort to get more followers, Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, Pinterest, Blog and WIX, you name it._**

 ** _-0-_**

 ** _-All in all, I just want to let you know that I never intended to just vanish, and I've made quite a few friends on here, and I don't want them to feel like I just stopped creating, nor do I want YOU, as my reader, to feel like I just packed up shop and gave up._**

 ** _So I mentioned that- 'Sometimes long projects die' -thing earlier, I also want to tell you my plan to get at least some of my old readers back on here, and hopefully new ones._**

 ** _I've limited my workload, currently aside from my HoC work and novels I have a story on Fictionpress and Wattpad, and I think I should have a story on here that I can update consistently again, as a fresh start, to get my creative flow back on FF, as to provide entertainment for you, and content for you to consume, and to further market my writing style._**

 ** _I'm not sure what this new story will be, but I feel like I need to do it, because Fanfiction is the largest writing repository in the world, and I want to help the people- who have helped me grow -to smile. I'm not sure how or when Worse than 2 Pairs of Handcuffs or Camera Angles will pick back up, heck, maybe they won't ever pick back up, but I don't want to vanish from the community here, and I've been doing a crappy job of showing that._**

 ** _-0-_**

 ** _-ANYWAY, now that I've poured my heart out to you by writing you a whole friggin' BOOK about it- Lol -I'll sum everything up._**

 ** _My content off of this site has expanded rapidly, if you're interested, give it a glance. I'm going to start writing another long story on here, I'm just not sure what story it will be based off of._**

 ** _I know I've asked this before of you, BUT, is there anything in particular that you would want me to write about? Something to try and make up for the abrupt non-updating of my other stories on here already? I promise, I will dedicate myself to it._**

 ** _-I apologize again to anyone who might be angry/disappointed to see me coming back after all this time with just an update notice-thing, I hope you have an awesome-sauce day, I'll be back on here soon with new content for you, if you wish to follow me into the depths of uncertainty and creative passion, as some of you have before_**

 ** _~Don_**


	8. Chapter 7

_**Again, sorry I've been gone so long. I have some artwork and other stories you can check out if you want, you can follow me on an original sci-fi/fantasy story I'm writing called- 'Dark Run' -it's got made up languages in it, made up civilizations, a reptilian race known as the Sindrossi, and the main character is FEMALE, which is something I haven't done a lot, that I should be doing more.**_

 _ **Give "Dark Run" a try, it's got cannibalistic scrap-marauders driving mad-max-ish' battle cars, there's a totalitarian city-state and a bunch of alien hives called Collectives, it's sort of post-apocalyptic like this story, and it's cool, read it, you'll like it.**_

 _ **Also, give my new 'Warhammer Fantasy- Blood Bowl' -story "Foul Play" -a try, it's really funny, and there's a Beast of Nurgle named Curtess Blightess who thinks he's a pacifist, it's awesome.**_

 _ **I drew some stuff on Deviantart, I have a 1978 Trans-Am Firebird in white-on-black, it looks really cool, I drew a WW2 M4 Tractor, and I have an Egyptian-looking Anubian Jackal I drew, it's a naked chick, so I figured some of you would like that, Lol**_

 _ **If you wanna' read Dark Run, check out my Fictionpress or Wattpad profiles, it's there, and Foul Play is on here, just follow the links on my profile**_

 _ **Thanks for sticking with me, have an awesome-sauce day**_

 _ **~Don**_

 **Chapter 7**

 **Learning the Truth**

* * *

Sanford had another flashback, when times were different, when everything wasn't blasted with soot, and ancient, and decrepit. He always had these episodes of reminiscing, which, he supposed were kind of impossible to avoid, seeing as life hadn't always been so hard.

It was human nature to long for homeostasis, especially when the person in question had once possessed it and had had it taken away from them. In the outskirts of Boston, speckled with the rural outcrops of farms and housing, domestic life was cooled, and quiet, and as more and more people moved west, all of those things only amplified as the population decreased.

Sanford remembered that when he was little, when he was still basically a baby, around the age of ten, eleven, he used to stay up late at night, and he'd listen to the wind, how it would howl through the shingles and the boards of his house.

He used to stay up wondering what his father had been doing at that exact moment, he used to think about the rest of the world, how he wondered what it all looked like, and why there was so much violence.

Even back then, when Sanford didn't have the right understanding or words to put to it, the idea of human nature escaped him. He didn't understand that while mankind assimilated great technologies, cures for diseases, and ways to improve and limit the tampering of the environment, people were still bickering, and delving into blatant stupidity.

Humans had this habit of going _backwards,_ of giving into emotion, focusing on things irrelevant, unimportant, forgetting the originality in the world and backstabbing one another when stress levels rose.

In truth, people were no different from animals, the only thing was, humans were smarter, a predator would just to eat you, _people_ would attempt to gain your trust first. Perhaps that was why _Nyx_ had come into his life, she wasn't _human,_ and there was actually something appealing about that.

Boston had a cold and common way of reminding him of the past, because, literally, the _past_ was everywhere around him, all the damned time. The past had been buried, dug up, and the parts had been scattered all over the place, to stink, and fester, and sit against the midday sun.

Everything that had been wrought on this festering world was the fault of humanity, Sanford sometimes wondered if things had changed that much for _him_ personally. Did his dwindling belief in God and spirituality coincide with his developing hatred for his own race? He couldn't really tell.

Out here, in the real and ugly world, absolutes were exactly what they sounded like, _absolutes,_ and there was no getting around them. The time for peace had been squandered, people's ignorance was to blame for that.

The wind whispered to him maddening things, it howled, and caressed the ruins of the city, licked the hills and bypassed wrecked automobiles.

Sanford Tobs heard the breeze bristling past the shoulders of his armor, the suit whined and clinked, he shifted in his crouch to get a better view of the road behind him, a winding path of gray, speckled with destroyed cars and blown out trucks.

Woodland bloomed to the west, east, and south, ahead, the farthest outskirts of the City of Boston began, there were apartments, small businesses, and further down a few miles, the ruined skyscrapers started.

If his mapping was correct- which it usually was –he wasn't that far off from the borders of the very people he was here to meet. The scanners inside his suit were batshit, according to area reports, there were at least ten other heartbeats in the vicinity, and all of them he counted as even threats.

Sanford scrolled through a few detail readings in his HUD, blink activating tiny scripts describing the body types of his assailants, they were all humanoid, the heartbeats, but the scans were also picking up _machines,_ and there were three of them.

Schematics showed up, he looked through them, didn't like a single thing he saw, and found himself grumbling a vast array of curses under his breath that could've put even _Hancock_ to shame.

But, speak of the devil, the billowing breeze coming down the road wasn't the _only_ thing to catch his attention, he heard the efforts of an engine thruster, and the clanking of aged metal parts moving.

"-I'll have you know TWO things, sir!" Hancock snapped as he floated over from behind some trees to the right, Sanford offered him a half-glance, and turned back to look down the road again.

"Either of these- 'Things' –wouldn't happen to have anything to do with why we're here, would they?" He creased his lip under his helmet.

"Of COURSE not! What do you take me for?! A REPUBLICAN?!" The robot snapped in offense.

"I had no idea you'd chosen a party..." Sanford snickered, he aimed his laser rifle down the winding pavement ahead, focusing on a vantage between two large complex buildings. "Doesn't matter though, seeing as they're both, you know, _gone,_ and all…"

"HA-! Serves 'em both right!" Hancock laughed. "-Buncha' blue bastards, toting around that fat ass elephant! TRYING TO PAWN THEY'RE TRUNKS OFF ON PEOPLE-! FUCK-'EM!"

"…Han'…"

"-WHAT, YOU MONKEY?!"

"…Those were the Democrats."

"BAAHHHH-! What's the difference anyhow?! He-She-Me, POLITICIANS! We should invent a time machine, sir!" Hancock poked him on the pauldron with his buzzsaw blade.

"-Really?" Sanford raised a brow, turning the scope to the left a little, he adjusted in his crouch, the armor creaking, and gravel shifting under his heels. "What the hell use what that be?"

"We could go back in time, find all those pot-smokin, dick-suckin', pocket-stuffers, and ram American flags up their asses!"

Sanford blinked, and he slowly looked away from his rifle's scope, he gazed at Hancock with a bewildered expression. "…What the hell is wrong with you?" –He finally got out.

"I'll tell you what's wrong, you SWINDLER-!" Hancock snapped, reclining back, as if insulted. "-When did the San of the Ford become a COMMIE' SUPPORTING GERBIL-STROKER?!"

"…Oh Christ…" Sanford rolled his eyes. "-Can we get to brass tacks, man?"

"FUCK YOURSELF!"

"Did you, like, you know, SEE anything? Anything that might be useful?" Sanford held a hand out in shock. "-Come on, Han'!"

"What else do you want me to say?! There's ten malformed, anti-hippy, cross-dressing pussies wearing army fatigues at ten-a-clock'!" Hancock pointed his Plasma-gun down the street. "-I've got GOOSEBUMPS, sir! Let's fuck 'em up!"

"You don't have skin, you freak." Sanford shook his head, musing. "-And didya' just choose NOT to notice the robots there with them, or…?"

"-OH YEAH?!"

"Yep."

"-WELL YOU HAVE A SLANTED DICK-! HA! TAKE THAT!"

"You don't even HAVE a dick."

"….Take it back."

"Nope."

"-TAKE IT BACK YOU SONOFABITCH-!"

"Nah."

"-EVERYTHING'S TURNING RED-!"

"Ya' know, I'd tell you to blow it out your ear, but, you don't have one of those either, so…"

"-DAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH-! I'LL CUT OFF YOUR LIPS WITH A FORK-!"

"Oof."

"-DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT DICKS-! YOU'RE STILL THE VIRGIN-MARY, REMEMBER-?!"

 ** _Bsskkkk-!_** –That must have been the trigger, because a very large rock sailed out and collided with Han's chassis, it did so with enough force to send sparks everywhere.

Sanford angled his head back, watching as his robot flailed, and then collapsed on the ground by the side of the road, giving off the distinctive sound of a bag of cans scattering on the dirt. The dust swirled, settled, and Hancock lay down there like a dead body.

"….MAN-DOWN-!" Came a moment later. "-SOMEONE PHONE A MEDIC-! Make sure he's a mentally unstable Korean-midget with a gimpy-eye-!"

"If things go according to plan, usiner', that won't be the case much longer." A feminine, deep voice announced.

"-Nice shot." Sanford grinned as Nyx stepped over from the opposite side of the road.

"Un coup critique'…" The Deathclaw chuckled, tossing a spare rock away in an under-handed toss of her claw. "-It is unfortunate, monsieur', I had another rock prepared."

"-Welp'," Hancock said. "-I fold!"

"That ain't the only thing…" Sanford scanned the road again, and then turned back to Nyx. "-They're just up ahead."

"This is the plan of attack?" She raised a scaly brow.

"I said you didn't have to come."

"Mm."

"I know, I know, not possible…" He huffed. "Look, if these people wanna' play hardball, they've got my attention."

"But escalating an undeclared war? Is this wise?" Nyx shrugged.

"They did that for us." Sanford countered, flipping the safety off his rifle. "This is retaliation, not provocation."

"-STUFF YOUR BIG WORDS UP YOUR ASS!" Hancock barked. "GO ON-! I KNOW WHAT YOU WANNA' DO! LEAVE ME-!"

"Get up, Han'." Sanford rolled his eyes and stood up. "We're moving."

"YOUR MOTHER WAS A COW MOLESTER-!"

"Least she wasn't a snowblower," Sanford called back. "-like yours."

"-WHHAAAAAATTTT-?!" Hancock shot up like a rocket, his arms flailing everywhere. "-YOU DARE MOCK ME WITH YOUR MOVIE-REFERENCES-?!"

"It got you off the ground, did it not?" Nyx grinned, her tail curling behind her.

"-THAT'S IT-! I quit!" Hancock said.

"You can't frikkin' quit, we're in the middle of nowhere," Sanford spread his arms in appall. "-Vent your unquenched rage on the bad guys, wouldya'?"

"-THAT SOUUNNDDDSSS-!" Hancock suddenly deflated. "-Very agreeable! What a plan, sir!"

"…Jesus Christ." The young man shook his head. "I dunno', I dunno' what to say."

"Mentalement instable." Nyx sighed tiredly.

"…Mental, something?" Sanford tried.

"Mentally unstable." She clarified. "The usiner' is insane."

"-I'M LIKE A FUCKED-UP SUNDAE-!" Hancock cackled. "-THE ICE CREAM'S MADE OF PURE, FUCKIN' MADNESS-! WITH WHIPPED CREAM, AND A CHERRY ON TOP-! And I'm not even served on a SUNDAY! I'm served on a MONDAY to cause INDIGESTION! HA-! HA-HA-!"

Down the road they went, one man, one robot, one biogenetic experiment gone wrong.

"…Remember," Sanford leaned over to Nyx. "Don't move until I TELL you to, you don't have armor, the last thing I need is you getting shot."

"I have been shot before." She angled a yellow eye at him sideways. "I understand, mon cher'."

"Just making sure."

"Yeah, well while you're both making sure, I'm getting a cramp in my left bolt-strut-!" Hancock complained, testing the propellant on his flamethrower attachment. "-Let's get to roastin' some of these bastards!"

"Keep it down," Sanford hissed, holding a gauntlet up for the two of them. "Nyx, you remember the layout we discussed?"

"Oui'."

"Good, take our flank."

"As you wish."

-He caught the reptile by the arm, clenching her leathery skin in his steel fingers, Nyx looked down at him in confusion.

"-Please be careful." He mumbled.

She leaned over, and horn and steel clunked whilst she tapped him with one of her horns, she flickered away after that, her cloven feet carrying her across the street, and into an alleyway faster than he could process.

Sanford whistled at her speed.

"….UGHH…." He looked back at Hancock, who sounded horrified.

"-WHAT?" Sanford shrugged. "What'd I do?"

"If I had the stomach to do it, I would've PUKED!" The robot drifted ahead of him. "-Who needs romance anyhow? It's cheap, used and abused and inbred!"

"…Well-! …Wow…" Sanford stopped himself, marveling at the cruelty. "…Oof."

"I'm picking up the schmucks, sir!" Hancock jabbed his Plasma-gun forwards. "-Looks like they have a sentry!"

"What do you mean?" Sanford asked as he jogged down the street.

"-He's up high, probably has a rifle, and he's looking to put a bullet in our balls!" The Mr. Gutsy clarified.

"MY balls, you mean."

"You are RELENTLESS!"

"Focus, Han'!"

"NEVVAAAA'!"

They congregated behind the corner of a concrete building's foot, advancing down the street with caution, as it was lined on both sides with storefronts, apartments and offices, it left a lot of places for snipers to hide.

Hancock wired his own scans over in connection to Sanford's suit, and as he sifted back through the readings in his HUD, he was made aware that indeed, there _was_ someone up high, and overlooking their point of attack.

"Sniper." Sanford nodded. "-He's Gunner, so he has to have a pretty nasty rifle with him."

"CAN I NUKE HIM?!" Hancock asked excitedly. "-PLEASE, SIR?!"

"….ughhh…" Sanford rolled his eyes, he jabbed a thumb at the windows of the building above. "-Knock yourself out."

"-HA-HA-HAAAAAA-! BEWARE THE BADASSERY AND LONG-DISTANCE REACH OF-! THE HAN-!"

"-But WAIT, until I-"

 ** _PSSHHHHffwwhhmmmmmmm….._**

"…give….the…signal…." Sanford stared up at the pillar of soot that spread and enveloped the mass of his armor, and most of the surrounding street. "….That's just swell, Han', real swell."

Shaking his head, Sanford checked his rifle again and the sword on his hip out of habit, he grumbled under his breath, and looped around the corner of the building.

By now, he had to believe Nyx was in position, Hancock had taken up post in the upper level of the white building behind him, and he was advancing on ground level towards their target, the plan was set.

"-Han', can you hear me?" Sanford wired over.

" _-Loud and clear, sir! Oh how I missed your annoying Bostonian accent-!_ " Hancock said through the static of the com link.

"We've only been apart for three seconds, Han'." Sanford chuckled under his breath, pressing his suit's back to the brickwork of another storefront's corner.

" _And what an agonizing three seconds they've been-!_ "

"Are you in position are not?"

" _Why not keep tabs on your crocodile?! INSTEAD OF ANNOYING THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF ME?!_ "

"She doesn't have a radio, you idiot."

"- _OH, well, fuck, don't ya' think she should, sir?_ "

"…That was strangely SERIOUS of you to say…" Sanford blinked. "…But, uh… yeah, g-good point."

" _Sniper in sight, sir! He's on a fire-escape! LOOK AT HIM! He's even got one of those ugly, dumb-ass Mohawks-! I'll scalp him afterwards and gift it to you as a birthday present!_ "

"If only I remembered my birthday…" Sanford grinned, peaking around the corner of the building at the expanse beyond. "…Yep, I see him too."

The Gunner encampment wasn't much, but Sanford had reasoned that if they were going to shake up the leadership, they needed to start out small. A large wooden and scrap wall sealed off an intersection of alleys between four rows of buildings, and a crank-activated gate made of construction boards was lowered and ajar at the front of the barricade.

The wall curled in an oval, and a large scrap shed made of bolted plates of aluminum and tin was erected just behind it, one of the buildings of the alleys making the encampment was armored with green-painted sheets of metal, it turned a series of eight windows into murder-slots, up three stories, two windows per story.

There was a ragged cloth flag jerking lightly in the wind, it streamed from a stake jutting from the arch of the low wall's gate, it was olive drab, and had a poorly painted white army star emblazoned on it. From where Sanford was hiding, he could see three people standing in the middle of the encampment, they were smoking cigarettes, talking lowly about something, two men and a woman, all clad in army fatigues and bits of United States infantry armor.

A fire escape ran across the ribs of the three story building these folks had plated to high hell, there was a single guy up there, in the usual Gunner dress, with this hideous brown-colored Mohawk blooming from his shaven scalp like a ridge. He was holding a scoped rifle over his gut, one that Sanford realized to be one of those .50 caliber bolt actions.

"…shit…" He mumbled. "-I HATE those things…"

" _What'd ya' say about your aunt's tumor, sir?_ "

"Kill that guy for me."

" _CAN I NUKE HIM?!_ "

"Toast his ass."

" _AH-HAHAHAHAHAHAAAA-! LET IT RAIN, YOU MOTHER-FUCKERS-!_ "

 ** _Pssshhhwwww-!_** –Something distant hissed, and produced a whimsical sound in the air.

The people in the camp must have heard it too, because the poor slobs sitting in the middle of the court, all three of them jerked their heads up to the sky, like a bunch of meerkats who had heard a lion approaching.

The missile was a comet in the sky, it trailed black soot, whirled around, and streamed right over the alleys, towards the fire escape where the Gunner sniper was standing.

The poor guy didn't even move or yell, he just stood there and watched until the missile smacked right into the flank of the building. The sniper, a portion of the building's flank, and most of the fire escape were all _incinerated_ , in a deafening explosion.

 ** _BMMMMMMMM-!_** –The explosion was so voluminous, that a mushroom cloud bloomed, and smoke and fire licked, bulged, and flew everywhere, debris, bricks, chunks of metal and tortured stone fell like large chunks of oversized hail into the camp below.

Screams were heard, shouts, rants, the three people in the alley court vanished in all the soot and smog.

Sanford was awhile off from the camp, and even _he_ still felt the heat wave from where he was, the air actually jolted under the concussion of the warhead's detonation.

"-HOLY SHIT-!" He cursed, hiding behind the corner of his building again, he heard bricks clobber on the ground nearby. "-What the fuck did you put in that missile, Han'?!"

" _WOOOOOOO-! HOLY SKUNKS FUCKING UNDER THE BARBEQUE-! THAT WAS AMAZING! AND, HA'-! Wouldn't you like to know, sir?_ "

"Starting pinning, I'm moving up!" Sanford yelled. "-Good shooting, Han'!"

The X-01's boots thudded into the ground with each step he took, he advanced with speed for the open gate of the camp's stockade.

"- _…We're under attack…!_ " Someone shouted in all the smoke clouding the camp up.

" _…I can't find, Gil'-!..._ "

Sanford reached the gate, he shouldered into the frame, and aimed the barrel of his weapon at the courtyard ahead.

There was a body buried in all the bricks and rubble that Hancock's launcher had created, it was a vaguely humanoid bulge of grays and tans, nearby, another Gunner, a man, who was coated in dust, was twitching, he had his arm stuffed under his hip, and the other was draped crooked across his chest, he produced these sobbing hiccup-like sounds.

Footsteps echoed across the courtyard, there was a Gunner woman, the same he had seen standing right over here before, she had her arms raised and was swinging at all the dust floating around, she was covered in gray, and a trail of crimson leaked from her mouth.

She had a pipe rifle weakly clasped in her one hand, she probably couldn't even _see_ Sanford if she had wanted to.

He took pity, bit his lip, and put three bolts in her chest.

 ** _PMPMPM-!_** –Red mist blistered into her sternum and erupted out her back, she was a film of paper that collapsed silently back into the smog about the ground.

"- _….I see him-!_..." Someone barked.

 ** _Patatatatat-!_** –Gunfire clattered, Sanford jumped in his own skin and folded back behind the stockade wall, rounds punched in the dirt and cast splinters from the boards and scrap he hid behind.

 _Assault rifle,_ Sanford listed. _What else?_

He could hear Hancock's Plasma-gun clacking, he saw green comets fly high over the stockade as his friend peppered the building he had previously hit with his missile.

 ** _Clk-! Clk-clk-!_** –Someone returned fire from one of the windows.

 _Carbine,_ Sanford peered around the arch again. _At least there aren't any of those .50's anymore._

 ** _Pok-!_**

- ** _fwww-CLKSSHH-!_** –A round shot out and punched a hole clean through the stockade right behind him, kicked up a cyclone of dust by his left heel.

 _Scratch that…_ Sanford cursed. _I_ hate _those things._

He checked his scanners again, there were two on the ground floor of the building ahead, three on the second and third stories above that, whoever had the _other_ .50 caliber rifle was in the latter.

"-HAN'! Keep 'em pinned-!" Sanford wired over. "-I'm breaking cover-! I'm giving Nyx the signal-!"

"- _Got it, sir-!_ "

Sanford pointed his gun straight up at the sky above, and he fired once- **_Pm-!_** –then twice- **_Pm-!_** –then thrice- **_Pm-!_** –all spaced out.

No sooner had he done so did he peak from cover, and right as he aimed for one of the windows through the smog, he saw something unbelievable unfold.

There was a large, dark shadow that _leaped_ from the rooftop of a nearby building to the camp's left, that sailed, and then landed somewhere on the roof of the building filled with their assailants. Nyx had played out their plan to the dot.

"-That's my girl…" He chuckled.

 ** _Pok-!_** –A bullet ripped through the arch right over the dome of his helmet.

Sanford grit his teeth, ducked instinctively, and sprayed the middle two windows of the building with laser bolts.

 ** _PMPMPMPMPMPMPM-!_** –the streaks of crimson ate clean through the aluminum plates and chewed into the brickwork and concrete, Hancock's plasma bolts kept flying through the sills and hitting the frames, for a while, the gunfire stopped from the upper floors.

Sanford moved out into the open, he shot from the hip and jogged, cutting a line left to right with his rifle across the ruined storefront of the building's foot, something glass shattered, and someone screamed distantly.

His boots crunched through the rubble, he had to jump over one of the corpses soiling the piles of concrete and dirt, he reached the foot of the building, and shouldered into a trim of brick between two fat display windows.

Someone peppered his cover from the inside of the building, an assault rifle, by the sound of it, bullets whizzed through the windows and smacked into the bricks inside.

"… _I'm gonna' fuckin' kill you, Tobs-!..._ " Someone yelled from inside.

"…Yeah?" Sanford mumbled, tearing a fragmentation grenade from its magnetic mounting on his hip. "-Why don't you eat my ass, you piece a' shit…"

He popped the pin out, and underhand tossed it through the window in front of him, he waited a few seconds, and the grenade actually surprised him by exploding a little early.

 ** _CLAKKKK-!_** –A deafening thwacking sound, dust catapulted all around him, and stone bounded and clobbered about inside.

Sanford jammed the barrel of his gun into the window, pulled the trigger, and sprayed a wide cone of fire into the room beyond. The arcs echoed to silence and the smog began to settle, Sanford looped one boot after the other over the chin of the window sill and hopped into the first floor.

"- _aaaaAAAAAHHH-!_ " – ** _Phskksllpp…._** –He jumped when a distant scream suddenly became louder, and then was cut off with a rather disgusting cracking and splattering noise.

Sanford scanned the destroyed lobby, there were tens of holes punched into the ruined walls, a pair of mangled corpses were in the corners, in several pieces each, it was hard to discern where the arms, torsos, legs and heads were from all the ragged meat.

He saw a stairwell leading up to the second floor, footsteps echoed from above, signaling some of his quarry running.

He glanced back outside and saw that a _new_ casualty had been added to the mounds of rubble in the courtyard, either Han' had shot the poor guy or he had just slipped in the chaos, but one of the Gunners had fallen head-first from the third story, and now everything from the neck-up looked like a smashed tomato.

Screams echoed from upstairs, the floor thudded, gunfire sounded.

"- _DAMN IT-! Sanford-! SANFORD-! YOUR ALLIGATOR IS STEALING MY KILLS-!_ "

 ** _Bm-CHSSKK-!_** –Sanford jumped when four pylons of wickedly sharp chitin punched through the plaster of the roof in the center of the lobby, a hollow scream drawled out for a long time, and then tiny rivers of blood flowed down to the tips of the claws, and dripped on the floor.

Nyx ripped her fingers from the body she'd run through, and her nails sapped back up into the ceiling, but the blood trails kept dripping.

"…ugh…" Sanford cringed. "-NYX? How ya' doing up there?"

" _-I am unharmed, monsieur'!_ " Muffled from upstairs. "- _I cannot say the same of nos ennemis'!_ "

"Hold on," Sanford stepped through the disgusting remains of the two victims down here, he mounted the stairs, and carefully started going up them. "-I'm coming…"

He had to loop narrowly through the tight space, but eventually, Sanford was able to step out into a large apartment level of the building, the wood floor was soiled with debris, scorch marks, and trails of speckled blood.

Two bodies, human, impaled, chopped up, basically ravaged by Nyx's claws, there was a pair of destroyed robots in the room as well, a pair of Securitrons, Army designs, holed through and blasted, either destroyed by Sanford's or Hancock's suppressive fire.

His Deathclaw was standing in the middle of it all, her claws coated red, there was a band of blood that had gone airborne that was staining her chest and belly too, she heaved from the all the excitement, her nostrils flaring.

"…They made me _angry._ " She huffed.

"-I-I can see that," He chuckled, nudging one of the men over with the toe of his boot. "Ugly fellow."

"They all are… _ugly._ " The Deathclaw tested the air, her tongue flickering. "…Mon cher'?"

"Yeah?"

"I smell something."

"- _Lizard-Lick's right, sir-!_ " Hancock communicated through his helm. "- _There's another one of those bastards in there with ya'!_ "

"…Yep, I see him," Sanford followed his scans' indications, he looked up another flight of steps leading to the third story, they were scratched and marred all over from where Nyx had rampaged down them to kill the assailants here. "I'll get him."

"I will come with you." Nyx stated.

"-I'm taking him alive," Sanford held a hand up. "-I could use a prisoner after all this shit."

Rubble clacked off his boots, the servos in his knees creaked, the stairs threatened to break under the weight of his suit, he jogged up the flight to the third story.

The room up here was in just as bad of shape, it looked like a really tall attic, the wood construction of the walls and ceilings reminded Sanford of that kind of cell. Laser and Plasma holes were everywhere, the two windows streaming gray light from the dayside were chewed and rendered larger by the volume of fire.

There was another destroyed robot up here, a blackened, arachnid sprawl laid out next to the window, it was the wrecked chassis of another Mr. Gutsy, Hancock had probably blown it to hell with his Plasma rifle, the damage looked consistent.

There was a ruined dresser that had been shot to pieces in the corner of the room, the whole side of the chamber- basically everything to Sanford's right –was _buckled,_ in that the wall was riddled with gaps, cracks, and there was smoke billowing from the merger between the floorboards and the wall itself.

Hancock's rocket had nearly taken the whole building down, he needed to finish his search of the room and get out, _quickly._

"-Nyx," Sanford called down the flight. "-Get out of the building, the structure's too weak."

"-I'm not leaving you inside." She informed simply.

"I wasn't asking."

"Neither was I, monsieur'."

"…God damn it…" He mumbled. She was so stubborn.

The floorboards creaked under his heels, he scanned the nose of his rifle about, until he heard something small, and metallic, skitter on the ground.

Sanford stopped in his tracks, he looked past the curve of his cuirass and saw a shell casing that had been nudged by the toe of his boot. It was golden, glistening, and blackened at the front and back.

"….Yep, .50 cal' shell, check…" He muttered. "…but where oh where, is our little friend…"

He looked at the back corner of the room, to the left.

There was a small closet, and the sliding wood doors were partially ajar.

Sanford sneered, and he stepped over as quietly as he could manage, aiming the barrel of his rifle, he switched sides on the battery pack and made ready to defend himself.

"…Hey," He said, angling the chin of his helm up. "-I'm taking prisoners, if you were wondering, you lay your gun down and come out, I won't shoot."

"… _bullshit…_ " He heard someone hiss inside, he recognized the weight in the voice, the lack of depth.

"…Lady, look, you shot at me, I get it, but I'm just here for answers…" Sanford stepped over, and he reached out for the doors of the closet. "…I think you know who I am."

No sooner did he grip the trim of the door, did Sanford hear something shift inside the closet space, he tightened his grip, leaned back on his heel, and then he flung the closet door aside.

 ** _SshhBMMKK-!_** –He stepped back, and immediately, there was a person who materialized from the shadows within, a Gunner woman, her face laden with black warpaint, she had a buzzcut head of black hair, and she had dropped her sniper rifle, and was advancing on him with a machete.

Sanford yanked out his sword, it flickered to life with a crackle of red energy, the woman snarled and brought her grimy blade in a downwards strike for his head. He easily parried the blow, their blades met, and red sparks kicked.

The Gunner hadn't been expecting the reaction times, and she had to reach pretty high up to counter Sanford's taller stature. He swung the merger to the left, and then he nailed her right in the chest with the butt of his rifle.

He knocked the wind out of her, she doubled back, he stepped forwards and buried his metal-encased knee into her stomach, she made this- _'pfff-!_ ' –sound, and collapsed in a groaning heap on the floor, the machete blade clanging and rolling away.

 _I never liked hitting girls,_ Sanford thought, he deactivated his sword and stuck it to his hip. _But when they're trying to cut my freakin' face off, I'll make an exception._

He hauled the Gunner over his shoulder, her arms draped raggedly over his back, and he made for the stairwell.

"-I have a prisoner." He announced without much enthusiasm to Nyx.

"Would you like a medal?" She raised a brow with disinterest as he clocked down the steps. "I do not see WHY we keep one of the animals breathing, je dois' admettre'…"

"I just want some damned answers," Sanford sighed, coming into view from the third story. "-Let's just get out of this building, I don't wanna' get buried or some shit."

"- _Even though it would funny as hell! HA-!_ " Hancock snapped through the mic.

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-


	9. Chapter 8

_**I drew a G.55 Fiat Centauro on Devianart, it came out cool, you should give it a look. The next part of 'Dark Run' is up too, that story's getting cool, and I posted a sketch of one of the marauder buggies the bad guys in Dark Run drive, you can see that too.**_

 _ **I've created pages on Pinterest and Instagram, you should check those out.**_

 _ **Do you want to learn how to speak some of the fictional languages I've made up for my Heroes of Crux universe? I posted an alphabet on my gallery, and I'll be releasing another Youtube video soon describing basic speech of another tongue.**_

 ** _Thanks for reading, have an awesome-sauce day_**

 ** _~Don_**

 **Chapter 8**

 **Rivalry within Rivals**

* * *

The air had a sour tinge to it after all the fighting and bloodshed, it was probably because of all the rubble and the dust that had been kicked up. The Gunner campsite looked like a literal ghost town, everything was coated whitish-gray from the spillage of shredded concrete, wood, and bricks.

Sanford had allotted Hancock to the job of searching the place while he worked, the Mr. Gutsy gave a quick fly-through of the nearby streets and alleys, and he sifted through some of the destruction in an effort to find anything useful, all the while complaining, with bouts of vulgarity flying from his voice amplifiers.

Doubly, Sanford had dug around his robot's disgustingly over-packed storage compartment, and had found an old tether of wire, which he later used to bind the wrists of their only prisoner, and the one survivor of their assault on Gunner turf.

"-Everything in here's fuckin' broken-!" Hancock ranted, tossing aside sheets of aluminum, he was inside the crushed remnants of the scrap shack the Gunners had built on the left side of the outpost. "-Maybe if SOMEBODY, hadn't blasted the damned Commies' with a missile-!"

"Wait a minute," Sanford turned around and held a gauntleted hand up. "YOU'RE the one who shot the missile."

"-YOU LIE-!"

"-Nope, I even remember your cackling, Han'."

"-HERE'S A CACKLE FOR YOU-! YOU HAVE PUBIC FLEAS-! HA-! TAKE THAT! COMMUNIST SONOFABITCH-!"

"…Jesus." Sanford looked back down at the woman who was sprawled on the ground at his feet, her arms were twisted behind her back, and her face was stirring with activity. "…Huh, look who's coming back from the dead."

Shouldering his rifle, he craned to gaze past the breast of his suit, the Gunner soldier shifted, rolled, and she shook her head in an uncomfortably rough jolt.

"…what happened…?" She mumbled, spitting on the ground between her knees as she sat up.

"You lost." Sanford grinned cheaply. "But, uh… I'm guessing you would've figured that out by now."

"…it was always gonna' end up like that one day," She shrugged a little, angling her neck back to look at him with blurry eyes. "-I know you."

"Really?" The man raised his lower lip. "Figure that."

"The Generals said you're a smart man."

"Not usually."

"They said you're Sanford Tobs, and they want your ass dead."

"Hmm, that's kind of them."

"That was this is, Tobs-guy? Striking back? That's what you're doing? You have any idea how BIG we fuckin' are?"

"I should know, I've killed hundreds of you and you, ya' know, just keep coming." Sanford decoupled his helmet from his suit, mechanics and couplings hissed, he cradled it in his free gauntlet by his gut, and kept his inane grin. "That's kinda' why I'm here."

"You're here to kill Gunners…" She smiled venomously. "-You work with those fuckin' militia pukes."

"I don't really have much of a better opinion of them then you do, if it helps."

"Go to hell, man."

"Listen," The X-01 creaked lightly as he knelt in front of her, leaning down to just above her level, even when kneeling, he still towered over her because of the augmentations from the Power Armor. "-I'm not one to shoot unarmed prisoners."

"Fuckin' liar." The soldier spat, narrowing her eyes. "-I heard about what you did to those Institute dealers."

"You guys were getting a cut of that, I remember…" Sanford sighed. "-As far as I'm concerned, you're just some grunt who got stationed in the wrong place, at the wrong time."

"…-WOW…" She snickered, bowing her head. "-I always thought I'd be shot up, not executed."

"I never said I was gonna' execute you," He shook his head. "I just want some answers, you gimme' them, and I let you go."

"No, no way," She snarled. "-You're a God damned liar, I know what you do to people like us, we all know."

"-There isn't any WE, anymore, Crew-Cut-Bitch-!" Hancock floated out of the smashed remains of the shack, jabbing a buzzsaw in the prisoner's direction. "-They all got flattened by our BAD-ASSERY-!"

"Come on, Han', I'm trying to work here." Sanford glanced over his pauldron.

"-BAHH-! Shove it up your titanium-plated ass!"

"-Did you program that thing to sound so fucked up…?" The Gunner asked him from below.

"-OH-HOHO-! So the Khaki-Lovin' BITCH wants ta' comment on, THE HAN'?! I'LL PISS ENGINE-COOLANT DOWN YOUR THROAT-! YOU-! HAVE A CROOKED NIPPLE-!"

"-Christ, you freak, go find Nyx or something…" Sanford waved him off. "-I can't even hear myself THINK."

"I'LL BUZZSAW YOUR FACE-!" The robot revved his saw-arm for emphasis.

"…Unbelievable."

"FEEEAARRRRR MEEEEE-!"

 ** _-Clnkk-!_**

"-Do not worry, monsieur', I shall alleviate the problem…"

Nyx had just walked up behind Hancock, she plucked him from the air with one of her claws, lifted him up, and started walking away with him, even as he spat, cursed, and swung his saw arm around with abandon.

"-SNEAK ATTACK-! SANFORD-! SAN-FORDDDD-! I'VE BEEN AMBUSHED BY A VIETNAMESE ANTHROPROMORPHIC ALLIGATOR-! IT'S TAKING ME AWAY TO ITS SWAMP LAIR-!" Hancock ranted, his saw buzzed and revved, and Nyx was forced to hold him farther away from her body as it cut the air right before her breast. "-I'M GONNA' TURN YOU INTO A NEW SNAKE-SKIN HANDBAG, YOU SWAMP-LURKING COMMUNIST-!"

"-I've never been anywhere near Asia, usiner'…" Nyx rolled her yellow eyes. "… You should know that. Maybe you can consider it in your time out…"

"-TIME-! OUT-!" Hancock screamed as loud as his emitters would let him. "-THE SAN' OF THE FORD' WILL BREAK ME OUT-! HE'LL RESCUE THE HAN'-! AND THEN I CAN FINISH MY DAYS HAVE RECURRING NIGHTMARES FROM NAM'-INDUCED PTSD-!"

"Tu es' fou'…" She grumbled. "-If you would be so kind to keep your voice down, you are giving me a headache…"

"-MAYBE IT'S YOUR ADVANCED UGLINESS-! I'D HAVE A FUCKIN' HEADACHE' TOO IF I WAS A BUTT-SUCKIN' IGUANA FROM VIETNAM!"

Though Hancock's rants became more distant as the Deathclaw toted him outside the stockade of the camp, Sanford and the Gunner could still here him screaming from across the alleys.

"….Ugh…" Sanford groaned lowly, tugging at his jaw with metal fingers. "-Anyway…"

"These are the fucks that've been tearing us apart?" The soldier blinked in shock. "-Some guy, a broken Gutsy model and a monster?"

"You didn't seem too surprised to see her, or HEAR her," Sanford observed. "Unusual."

"We all know about your pet," She sneered. "It's part of daily briefings now."

"So how long have your bosses been aiming to kill me?"

"Years, it only just started ramping up lately."

"Does this mean you're willing to talk?"

"Depends, what's in it for me-?"

"-I'll tell ya'," He cut her off. "If you don't talk, I'll leave you here, tied up, with all your dead friends. If you DO talk, I'll UNTIE you, and set you loose in any direction you want."

"-That's the best you can fuckin' do?" She snapped.

"You aren't really in a position to DEAL, don'tchya' think?" Sanford clicked his fingers on the side of his rifle. "Now, look, I could just shoot you, but I don't want to."

"That's real FUCKIN' generous of you…" She bore her teeth at him. "-It doesn't matter to me, if you don't shoot me, the Generals will."

"Why's that?"

"They don't accept failure, or defections, lately."

"You were taken by surprise, and you didn't defect, you'll just go back home to 'em, and maybe, we'll run into each other again on ANOTHER battlefield." Sanford shrugged. "It makes no difference to the three of us, if you chose to just waste a chance I gave you to walk away."

"We can't just walk away…" She rejected. "What the hell do you think this is, a CHARITY?"

"There'd be something nice about it all if it was," Sanford chuckled. "Listen, I told you what your best bet is, I'm not a murderer, gimme' some names, and you're on your way."

The Gunner sighed, shifting on her legs, she pulled against the wire tethering her arms up, and gave him this really nasty expression.

Sanford hid it well, but the last part of his statement to her was… _troubling,_ at the least. After all, wasn't it fair to say that, by definition, he _was_ a murderer? He'd shot unarmed prisoners in the past, he'd killed those he didn't _have_ to kill.

 _But only when they had done something to deserve it,_ he had reasoned. _But would playing justice damn me to hell?_

He didn't know the answer to that, just like so many other questions, questions that he hated, that always buzzed around in his skull like a hive of hornets. Sometimes, the hornets stung him, and they weighted his conscience with the deeds of what he had done in his life, and _that_ was truly a horrific sense of self doubt, and depression.

"…what names…?" His prisoner finally muttered in defeat, bowing her head again.

"Lemme' ask you," Sanford adjusted his steel heels on the ground. "-What's YOUR name?"

"…Why does that matter?"

"'Cause I'm just curious."

"…Nate?"

"NATE? That sounds like a dude's name." He chuckled.

"Fuck you." She cringed.

"Well, NATE, I'd love to tell you that I'm SORRY for shooting your friends, but, uhm…" Sanford rolled his wrist about the destruction. "-I'm kinda' NOT sorry I did that."

"Fuck YOU." She reiterated with sing-song annoyance.

"Tell me about the Generals, how many are there?" He blinked.

"What? You planning on killing them? ALL of them?" She laughed in his face. "Dream on, man."

"Just answer the question, the sooner you fill me in, the sooner you can leave this hell hole ALIVE." Sanford frowned at her seriously. "I got your name, you already know mine, I can't be any more personable than THAT, with a Gunner."

"…There's seven of 'em." Nate grumbled.

"Which one do you serve under?" He raised a brow.

"SERVED," She corrected. "-If they find out I survived a fight with nasty Sanford Tobs, they'll know I spilled the beans…"

"-Fine, which did you ONCE serve under?"

"I was with General Alliston…" Nate said. "-A real freak, he's got problems, that's why the other Gen's don't like him."

"What are the other Generals' names?"

"….Man, I don't know… there's… there's AL', he's a fuckin' maniac, there's Sheridan, and Border Bom, and… Mardus, and… I-I think one's named Rolf, or some fuckin' shit…"

"You seem a little… in the dark." He suggested. "How does that work?"

"Because those Gen's are paranoid, man!" She leaned back from him in appall. "-Only their own battalions know their full fuckin' names, I only know them 'cause I banged with some guy who did before me."

"-The last two Generals' names?"

"…fuckin', uhm… I got Al', and Border Bom, and… Whiskers, yeah, Whiskers is one of 'em, he's been on Alliston's case for awhile, their units are at each other's throats." She explained. "And Whisker's got Ganger on his side, Ganger's another freak."

"Alliston, Sheridan, Border Bom, Mardus, Ganger, and WHISKERS?" Sanford creased his lip. "-Sounds like a bunch of quacks to me."

"You get real close and personal with 'em, Tobs, they ain't QUACKS," Nate sneered. "They're there for a reason, and it's because they're all fuckin' psychos, and they killed anyone who said otherwise."

"I don't doubt it," He chuckled. "I'll just have to kill them, before they kill me."

"…If you could wipe us the fuck out, hell, man…" Nate shook her head. "-It's about damn time someone shook up this shitshow leadership, everything's been goin' down ever since you showed up."

"…Is that why your bosses are trying to kill me?" Sanford squinted. "The ONLY reason?"

"…You're the fuckin' boogeyman to us." She looked at him straight. "You killed some of our best guys."

"…Wow." Sanford exhaled, doting on his boots. A good gust of wind came through the alley, casting dust about in tiny crinkles of pebbles and disruptions, it tugged at his black hair, brushed his face, and nudged Nate's fatigues.

It was like a prophetic reminder had been summoned by the soldier's words, the environment, in that moment, chilled Sanford more than the brevity of what his actions had apparently caused.

"…One battalion per General?" He asked her suddenly.

"Yep." Nate struggled against the tethers. "-Could ya' get this shit off of me now, man? I just wanna' fuckin' leave..."

"You know," The joints in Sanford's armor creaked as he stood to his full height, couplings links, steam hissed, he placed his helmet back over his head. "-You don't really seem… like GUNNER, material."

"…Real sweet," Nate grinned sourly. "-Fuck you, Tobs."

"I'll take that as a- 'Thanks for not shooting me' –and one more thing," Sanford trailed as he stepped behind her, and raised her hands to start untying the bonds. "-this guy that knew all these names, he wouldn't happen to have a name too, would he?"

"…Are you gonna' kill him?" She gazed over her dirty shoulder at him.

"Depends." He shrugged, the tethers snapped loose, and her arms slouched past her hips, she hissed in discomfort and rubbed at her hands with looping pointy's and thumbs. "Will he surrender so easily?"

"…I'm too old for this fucken' shit…" Nate mumbled under her breath as she stood on shaking legs.

"How old?" He chuckled, stepping back, keeping a hand on the butt of his rifle.

"Forty five." She said, turning to face him, dwarfed under the height of his armor. "-Where'd you find that thing?"

"What?"

"The armor."

"None of your business."

"…Eh, fuck you."

"Your friend's name?"

"…Stig." Nate scratched the back of her neck. "He's a bit of a loser, he shouldn't fight too well…"

"STIG?" Sanford shook his name. "Christ, the names you people choose."

"You shoot at us, and now you gotta' fuckin' judge us too?" She stepped back, looking about the carnage with a lost expression. "…SHIT."

"Go a few blocks in that direction," Sanford jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. "-Diamond City shouldn't have a problem if you lose the Gunner uniform, tell them you're a worker out of a job or something, ask for a guy named Robert Cannary, tell him what happened, he'll set you up."

"…Man, why the fuck you doing all this?" She asked. "I shot at you."

"You told me you aren't a Gunner anymore, so you're not my enemy anymore, I shot at you too," He shrugged with his pauldrons. "Now get lost."

Nate looked at him for a long moment, snorted, glanced around again, and dusted her dirty hands off her army pants, she jogged away, and vanished underneath the arch to the stockade wall of the destroyed camp, her boots nudging a few loose bricks and rocks in all the quiet.

Sanford balanced his rifle over his shoulder, he trailed his eyes over one of the dead bodies lying in all the rubble, and he listened to the crackling of fire from the destruction wrought by Hancock's missile launcher.

For the first time, in a long time, he felt a little…. _lighter._

It just reiterated a past point, in that he wished more people just put down their guns and started talking.

But violence was human nature-

Nearby, there were struggled gasps, drags of something solid against stone and dirt. Sanford glanced to the left, and saw a mortally wounded Gunner soldier clawing his way closer from a nearby pile of wreckage, he was a grounded zombie, coated gray and white from masonry dust, he was missing a leg from the knee-down, and he had a pistol in one of the quivering hands he used to crawl.

Sanford sighed in defeat as the broken, wounded, and dying man gave up his last breaths, to try and aim his little '32 at Sanford's armored form.

The scavenger let his Laser Rifle fall into his other hand at the stock, he aimed from the hip, and shot the poor schmuck right between the eyes, just once.

 ** _PM-!_** –Blood misted out the back of his cranium, the pistol-wielding hand went limp, and the body slouched face-first into the dirt, and didn't move.

Rolling his jaw, Sanford clipped his gun to his hip, and sighed angrily.

-Human nature, he remembered.

There didn't seem to be much that could be done about it.

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-

"-I'LL TURN YOU INTO GECKO-OATMEAL, YOU LIZARD-FROM-HELL-!"

"Usiner',"

"-WHAT?!"

"I am tired, fourbu', actually."

"-AM I SUPPOSED TO CARE-?! YOU HAVE TOUCHED THE HAN'-! YOU'VE VIOLATED THE SPACE OF DEMOCRACY-! AND FOR THAT-! I'LL RIP OUT YOUR OVARIES-!"

The Deathclaw sighed, gave up, and flicked her wrist, her patience running out on the dot.

Hancock flew from her grasp, clattered onto the pavement of the street ahead, and smacked into a chaotic heap of robotic limbs on the ground, giving off his usual bag-of-cans rattle whilst he did it.

Nyx retracted her long claws, and dusted her palms on her scaly legs, her tail moving in slow arcs behind her. Her yellow eyes were narrowed with a sort of… _despondency,_ today had only just started, and in combination with the events of last night, she felt worn, and frankly, _done._

"-HA-! Thought you could silence, THE HAN'-! Didn't ya'-?!" Hancock shot up from the street with a burst of soot and fire, he levitated angrily before her, and his Plasma Gun primed with a whine of its batteries. "-TASTE THE GREEN BAD-ASSNESS OF MY BLASTER, YOU MUTATED FROG-!"

"Usiner'," Nyx put a hand over her long, reptilian face. "PLEASE."

"-W-What did you say-?!" Hancock lowered his gun in complete shock. "-Holy Putin's Tiny Yambag-! THE APOCALYPSE MUST BE HAPPENING-! The Lizard-Bitch said PLEASE-!"

"…That," She looked around at the ruins of the street. "-already happened."

"-YOU GET MY POINT!"

"No," Nyx stepped over to a nearby car, a sedan, once painted white, now a rusted strip of tortured steel that was pulled over the sidewalk before a storefront. "-No I do not."

 ** _Pshhk—kkk!_** –She arced her tail for clearer room, and sat on the hood, causing the metal of the frontal chassis to compress slightly under her weight, the whole automobile shifted with screeches of steel against the pavement below.

Nyx draped her arms in her lap and doted on the concrete below her, leaving Hancock to awkwardly float there, still seeking the energy of a good insulting exchange, the robot was made to understand that even his friend/enemy wasn't in the mood.

"…Well, BALLS…" He snapped. "-What in all that's buttery and artery-clogging did I do?!"

"…Nothing that you don't USUALLY, do, I suppose…" Nyx mused. "…We killed many foes today, oui'?"

"-ISN'T IT GRAND?!" Hancock laughed. "-More kill tallies for the collection! Pretty soon we'll have whacked more scumbags than the prison system of Uncle Sam put away innocents-!"

"…I'm hungry." Nyx raised a brow at the street, her tail jolting over the hood of the car. "Au' hasard' as that may sound…"

"-Why not stuff a tire in your fat face?!" Hancock suggested. "-Or a bottle of anti-freeze-!"

"I could convince Sanford to finally scrap you, like the outdated les' appareil' you are…"

"-HOW ABOUT I SHIT SOME ENGINE COOLANT DOWN YOUR FAT, FROG-THROAT-?!"

"-I got an energy bar." –Both Nyx and Hancock looked to the west when they heard Sanford's voice, the man trotted over without any cause, or concern, and he was digging in the knapsack over his suit's sigh. "…At least, it's SOMEWHERE in here…"

"C'est prevenant' de toi, mon amour'…" Nyx cupped a claw over her snout to hide the flush developing.

Hancock darted his ocu-lenses between the two of them.

"….GOD SAVE US ALL! If only I had a damn mouth to grimace in horror with!" He snapped. "It's like- 'All My Children' –Fucked-up edition-!"

"Get a grip, Han'," Sanford waved him off, and underhand tossed a granola bar at Nyx. "Found it."

"Je vous' remercie'…" Nyx smiled toothily, catching it in one of her hands.

"…Welp'," Sanford put his gauntlets on his hips, looking between his two companions. "-I think I got what we came here for."

"TARGET PRACTICE! AH-HAHAHHAAAA-! Those fuckers never stood a chance-!" Hancock cackled. "-We ripped 'em apart-! KICKED THEIR BALLS-! STOLE THEIR WEALTH-! Spoken like a true Democracy-!"

"That sounds more like a despotism," Sanford raised a brow. "-Last I checked, the U.S was supposed to be the PRIOR, not the latter."

"HA-! Tell that to those hula-dancin', dislocated-hip-job Hawaiians-!" Hancock countered.

"…Oof," Sanford cocked his head, chuckling. "-Hey, if we're goin' down that route', how about the Samoans, or the Philippines?"

"You speak of history?" Nyx swallowed the whole bar in one bite, leaning her arms past her knees again. "All countries are at fault of hypocrisy, I believe."

"…Not that any of it matters anymore, but, shit," Sanford nodded at a nearby destroyed skyscraper, deeper into the city. "-All those countries are blast craters now, right?"

"Are we gonna' shoot more fuckers or NOT?!" Hancock cried impatiently. "-CLARICE HUNGERS FOR BLOOD-!"

"…Yeah, I got a bone to pick with these people," Sanford nodded. "-Our prisoner gave us some good info', I think."

"Did you kill the chienne'?" Nyx asked.

"Nah," Sanford shook his head. "-I, uh… I let her go, she… she didn't want to fight anymore."

"-WHAT-?!" Hancock screeched. "-DON'T YOU REMEMBER A THING ABOUT OUR POLICY, SIR-?!"

"…POLICY?" Sanford angled his head back. "-What kinda' policy?"

"THE NO SURVIVORS POLICY-!"

"-Jesus Christ…"

"-YOU'VE BETRAYED THE CREED-! HOW COULD YOU, SIR-?!"

"Stick it in your thruster, you freak."

"-MOTHERFUCKER-!"

"…I am proud of you, mon cher'." Nyx admitted, smiling with her chops at him. "It is noble of you."

"…No," He disagreed. "There's nothing noble about what I do."

"-I've got the next place we can shoot the hell out of mapped, sir-!" Hancock checked his maps and scans. "-FOR LIBERTY-!"

"…Back to work, right?" Sanford snickered. "-Let's get this over with."

"How far do you plan to take this assault of yours?" Nyx quizzed, the sedan she was using as a chair jerked and creaked as she hopped off it.

"As far as I can." He answered her honestly. "-As far as these bastards are willing to let it get."

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-


	10. Chapter 9

_**I uploaded a preview of one of my novels, if you're interested, it's got romance and all kinds of mushy emotional touchy-feelie' antics, if you're into that sort of thing. You should check out my art gallery, I have a whole bunch of new drawings, and I've updated Dark Run, and Foul Play should be updated again soon.**_

 _ **You should also check out my new language video on Youtube, you can learn to speak one of my made languages and stuff, Lol, well, basics, anyhow.**_

 _ **Thanks for reading, have an awesome-sauce day**_

 _ **~Don**_

 **Chapter 9**

 **Industrial**

* * *

A cool cut breeze chose this exact moment to bustle down the street, strewn pebbles, dust devils, and strips of lighter garbage were cast south from its might, they bounced, skittered, and pattered quietly against pavement, brick and concrete.

Relatively quickly did the streets of Boston enclose them, they netered the southern fringes of the city, passing through ruined, storefront populated roads, dank alleys, and hrough the blasted hulks of wider, stouter buildings.

Normally, when Sanford had mounted expeditions into the city, he only did so on the prospect of scavenging, or visiting Diamond or Goodneighbor, the amount of times he had come here to actively _hunt someone down,_ were countable on one hand.

Sanford was guilty of participating in the conflicts that constantly consumed New England, after all, he'd picked sides, he'd found his ideals and the people who better suited them or rejected them, and he'd stood alongside folks, and shot other ones, accordingly.

The militia were but a means to an end, Sanford couldn't really say he enjoyed a _kinship_ with them, they were merely allies of convenience, and certainly they did things that he did not agree with. But Sanford- whether he idolized the Minutemen or not –had still chosen with end of the deal he was on.

Despite his rocky relationship with them, the militia were a better option in his opinion than the _Gunners,_ or what had been the Institute, or those silver coated gangsters to the east in the harbor. He liked to consider himself a relatively open minded guy, he didn't _penalize_ based on someone's blood, or based on what they looked like.

That had been why the East Coast Chapter of the Brotherhood had turned him off, and why the aforementioned knightly folk were weary of working with Sanford. Their racial policies against mutants- blatantly –pissed Sanford off, after all, he'd worked with Ghouls in the past, and now, all this time later, _technically,_ he was romantically involved with a mutant in addition to all of that.

Again, Sanford couldn't _judge,_ least of all himself. The way he looked at things, with all the evil that had gripped Earth, there were plenty of people guilty of much more heinous crimes and sadistic pleasantries, he'd even said it in the past, he'd earned the right to be with whoever he wanted.

But that statement had been based off of the _hardships_ he had trudged through in order to reach the current time and day, back then, his war had been about _survival._ Surely, there was some politicking in there, he chose sides with the various power bases of Boston, and that was political and ideological enough.

-But now, it seemed more and more, he was fighting, and engaging in armed situations, because he _wanted_ to.

This, actually, really frightened him.

The act of _killing_ was supposed to be a dreadful event of horror, and pure evil. Having to wrench the life of another person away was a climactic and catastrophic event, reading mere numbers about the worst disasters and wars that had happened obviously dehumanized and minimized the effect on people who were sheltered, and innocent.

Sanford had killed so many people, that he didn't even remember the exact number, he had lost count years ago, and most certainly, he did _not_ remember the face of the first person he had ended, contrary to what old movies or novels would tell you.

There came a point where it morphed from a rare and infrequent occurrence of emotion and terror, and where it became a _second nature,_ and by that point, what indeed was the difference between a person and an animal? Carnivorous animals killed for meat, and there were no moral retributions and depressions they suffered from it, at least, as far as science was concerned.

People were different, the gift of _sentience_ was also doubly a curse, for sentience gave one the freedom of understanding at least some of the energies that made our world. Sanford had become an entirely different person, he had been raised to be… well, _good,_ to be a good kid.

He'd been taught manners, right from wrong, to appreciate the things he had, and while yes, many of those attributes stayed with him, his ability to comprehend his own violent actions was gradually slipping.

The madness, and the sadness and the anger that had been induced by the act of killing _en masse_ had tortured Sanford Tobs for most of his adult life. Over time, he began to see cracks in his defense, in his plea that it was all for _survival,_ nowadays, Sanford was using his grim talents for personal reasons.

The Gunners had attempted to kill him for the last time, and now, he was fully set on hunting them down, and taking their leadership out of the question once and for all.

Though it was a monumental task to take up, to wage war upon and destroy an _entire faction_ with basically three people, Sanford had been willing to undertake his campaign _alone,_ but Nyx, and Hancock, were assurances that he would never be alone.

Nyx would follow him into hell if he so willed it, and Hancock would've trudged around too, if just for the chance to shoot demons in the face. There was an unbreakable loyalty that had been created, one Sanford would probably never fully appreciate until the day he died.

Though, _death_ , when it was himself in the question. That scared him more than anything else.

And all about _hell,_ and his dying… when he _did_ die, where would he go?

"Are you well, monsieur'?"

"-What-?" Sanford jumped inside his own armor, he looked at Nyx, who was looming over his flank, her yellow eyes locked onto his face with concern. "-W-What did you say? Sorry, I was, uh…. drifting."

"I asked if you were well." The Deathclaw blinked. "You obviously are not."

"What? Pffft, I dunno' what you're talking about," Sanford shrugged. "I'm doin' as good as I can, girl, no worries."

"-HA-! Who's suffering Nam' flashbacks now, Iron-Giant Man-?!" Hancock cackled, jamming his buzzsaw into Sanford's arm plating

"Jesus, Han', you were never IN Vietnam!" Sanford defended, shifting away from him and closer to Nyx. "-Quit it with that crap."

"-I'LL DRAIN ENGINE COOLANT IN A CUP-! AND MAKE YOU GARGLE WITH IT-!"

"Fuck off, man." Sanford grumbled.

"The usiner' is inconsolable…." Nyx reminded him in a mutter. "-You're wasting your breath."

"I can't help it." Sanford raised his rifle and peered through the scope to the north. "-He just says things sometimes, it's damned annoying."

"HELL-LO-?! You Commies' can't talk espionage about, THE HAN'! The Han's right here-! FLOATING RIGHT NEXT TO YOUR FAT, UNGAINLY, INBRED FACES-!" The Mr. Gutsy belted violently, levitating lower to mimic Sanford and Nyx's crouches.

"Shut UP, you Nazi…" Sanford groaned. "-Go in the corner or something, quit yellin'."

"-WHATTHEFUCKDIDYOUJUSTCALLME-?!"

"It was unwise to label him that, mon cher'." Nyx rolled her eyes. "I suppose STEALTH is out of the question…"

"-SO THIS IS WHAT IT'S COME TO, HUH-?! I'LL SHOW YOU A NAZI, YOU BLOATED, PRE-WAR, SCROTAL-SCRATCHING, OVER-OBSESSIVE IGUANA LOVER-!" Hancock ranted. "-I'LL GOUGE OUT YOUR EYES WITH A UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR'S LECTURE POKER-! WITH- 'SIEGE-HEIL' –WRITTEN ON THE SIDE IN SHARPIE-!"

"What the hell are you even saying?" Sanford shook his head, lowering his gun. "-You really want something to vent your rage on? Go down there and hit these fuckers from the LEFT, can you do that?"

"AH-HAHAHA-! VIOLENCE! VICTIMS! KILL-TALLIES! I'll make Uncle-Sam proud-!" It was amazing how the robot's focus switched back and forth, and rapidly, like the mind of a small child. "-CAN I BATHE IN THEIR BLOOD, SIR?!"

"Guns blazin', man, have at it."

"-AHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA-! FEAAARRR MEEE-! FOR I AM-! THE HAAANNNN-!"

"-I was correct in my supposition'?" Nyx watched the robot drift down a curl in the street ahead, moving for their target, wedged between a few buildings and a large parking lot. "Are you not concerned that the usiner' will be destroyed on approach?"

"HAN'? Getting killed before a fight?" Sanford blew it out his lips. "That robot would sooner apologize to me for all the times he's called me a monkey, or for all the times he insults me based off my nuts."

"What does that even MEAN?" The Deathclaw squinted.

"He said it himself," Sanford shrugged again. "Never try to understand what he is, or what he says."

"That sounds dangereux' to do…" She trailed as the two of them rounded the short concrete wall they had been behind.

"Everything about this is DANGEROUS," Sanford laughed, he hopped over a rise of rubble, his heels smacking into the pavement, just after the chin of the blown out apartment they had cut through to reach this street. "-You're not getting cold feet NOW are you? It's a little late for that."

"…Why on Earth would my pieds' be cold?" She asked dumbly. "-Wait, is this another insinuation for menstruation?"

"-What?! No!" Sanford glanced over his pauldron as he jogged. "-How the hell did you get THAT out of COLD FRIGGIN' FEET?"

"-I am unfamiliar with all expressions of human speech," She pouted. "You cannot blame my suspicion of your JOKES."

"-I'll give ya' that," He chuckled like a small child. "-That rag comment was hysterical."

"I'm tempted to flick you."

"Flick THEM." He pointed for the encampment at the base of the street. "-The moment Han' draws their attention, we're going in, I take the front, you vault over the walls when I draw fire, got it?"

"Oui', monsieur'." She sighed. "-Allotted to _skirmishing,_ how noble."

"-It's what you're best at," He smiled, the two of them folded behind the corner of a building. "-I gotta' find a way to armor you."

"Excusez-moi'?" Nyx's face was stacked over his as they both peered around the concrete of the corner. "ARMOR? For me? How would such be possible?"

"I'd figure out a way," He retracted, and looked up at her musingly. "-Forgetting that we do the impossible around here?"

"I met you, mon cher'," She grinned toothily. "THAT was impossible enough."

"I'm grateful for it," He clicked off the safety on his rifle. "Which is why I have you FLANKING all the time, can't have ya' getting shot."

"Would it mar my appeal to you?" She rumbled comically.

"Yep." He turned around and smacked his gauntlet on her scaly backside. "-Go get 'em."

Nyx was a blur of upwards motion, concrete clobbered, dust skittered, and soon her ridged tail was a curtailing and soon vanishing anomaly on the roof of the building they were behind.

Sanford whistled at the acrobatics, and then he looked out from cover at their newest target.

"-Han'? You ready?" He radioed.

"- _WAIT UNTIL THESE SOCIALIST-PORKERS GET A LOAD OF HANCOCK'S DEMOCRATIC ASS-KICKIN' SAUCE-! HA-HAHAA-! HERE IT COMES YOU FUCKERS-!"_

Gunfire sounded, distant, but close enough to determine the origin.

Sanford saw his robot dart out in the middle of an open parking lot, advancing on a story-tall wall of scrap and lumber, his Plasma gun roaring, and sending streaks of green energy for the wall's top.

A few Gunners had been perched up on the guard walks on the wall's upper side, their heads and shoulders were visible over bolted and jagged plates of metal, spray painted drab, with the occasional army star emblazoned in patches.

Hancock must have hit somebody, because Sanford- even from his distance –clearly saw a body tumble off the back of the wall and into the encampment it contained. Shouts sounded, as did the clacking reports of assault rifles and carbines, Sanford took it as his incentive to start moving.

This was a much larger Gunner installation than the little outpost they'd wiped out earlier, according to his helm scans, there were at least _forty people_ inside the camp, and a small detachment of robots, they were outnumbered, which was why Hancock was part of a grand distraction plan.

The dead from the outpost had supplied Sanford with a beautiful new assortment of _Plasma Grenades,_ the shack that had been crushed by the debris from Hancock's rocket launch had a full trunk of the damned things, and Sanford had figured they would come in handy.

He had probably around eight or nine of them, they would be perfect for clearing rooms.

As he ran out into the open, his suit jolting with each footfall, his pulse quickened when activity on the wall directly ahead of him caught his eye. The scans showed a cluster of soldiers- five in total –they were sprinting past the section he was approaching, and they saw him below, and started shouting for more guys.

The pavement kicked and a cloud of dust erupted by his boots, sparks flashed and lit the underside of his helmet's chin as a trio of rounds bounced off the X-01's breastplate. He raised his rifle and sprayed the section of the merlons above from the hip.

The red bolts of energy punched clean through the jagged steel railings and guards the Gunners had ringed the walks of the wall with, his scans indicated two heartbeats ceasing, but all Sanford saw was dust, sparks, and red mist from the ground.

He shouldered against the drab mass of the defense wall- **_thwmp-!_** –his suit rattled all the scrap, and he was beneath his assailants' cone of fire.

Sanford aimed for the chin of the wall right over his head, and he sprayed it with two back-forth strokes of fire- **_PMPMPMPMPMPMPMPM-!_** –the bolts sliced through the steel and lumber, dust flew, ionized carbon fluttered through crimson smog, and he heard someone scream from above.

"How ya' doin', Han'-?!" Sanford yelled into his com link, keeping an eye on the rim of the wall over his head.

"- _AH-HAHAHAAA-! YOU DUMB BASTARDS COULDN'T HIT A TURKEY, EVEN IF IT WAS STANDING STILL-!_ "

Sanford chanced a bit of a step forwards, and saw Hancock using his thruster to great effect, he zipped in zigzag movements, quite quickly, there were bullets everywhere, and it seemed the Gunners could only manage to get glancing hits and grazes.

Sparks flickered off Hancock's reinforced chassis, the robot kept suppression with his one arm, and then he brought around his launcher attachment.

"- _HOLD ONTO YOUR MOTHERS' PANTIES AND PRAY FOR BLOWBACK-! AHAHAAAA-!_ " Hancock yelled that so loud, that Sanford heard him even from the distance _and_ over all the weapons fire, his ears blared from the volume put forth in the com link.

He needed to move, as this was all part of the plan.

With one swift motion, Sanford hauled his own weight and threw himself into the air, his suit produced a miniature earthquake as the breast, sternum and gut clapped into the pavement at the foot of the defense wall.

No sooner had his commanding officer vacated his zone of targeting, did Hancock let a special armor piercing warhead rip from his launcher. The missle made a hissing suction-ish sound as it dislodged from the launcher's barrel, it twisted and curled in the air, as a gray-trailing comet of soot.

Sanford put his gauntlets over the dome of his helmet- and in the momentary panic –he even dropped his gun.

The missile wound one last time, before spectacularly imbedding its pointed nose into the flesh of the wall.

 ** _BMMMMKKK-!_** –It sounded like a clap of thunder had echoed across the lot surrounding the Gunner compound, a mushroom cloud of gray dust, with tendrils of fire burrowing out from its heart belched from the impact zone.

It was strange, the hybrid sort of noise the warhead created, it was like hearing a mix between some monstrous creature roaring, and hearing metal screech. Whatever the exact description _could've_ been, it mattered not, for the section of the wall had been ripped open like a popped tin can.

The heat from the explosion was still palpable and present, the crate wrought into all the scrap had a glowing orange ring, and the air wavered under the duress of rising warmth.

"- _You're up, sir-!_ " Hancock cried, darting away as a Gunner with an assault rifle leaned over the ridge of the wall, and popped half a clip into the metal of his rounded chassis.

Sparks flew everywhere, a small trail of black leaked from Han's flank, he zipped to the left, and sprayed the wall with more Plasma fire.

"-HAN'-! Fall back-!" Sanford waved a gauntlet at his robotic friend as he collected himself off the ground. "-Flank with Nyx-!"

"- _I DON'T NEED SOME ASS-EATIN' COMMIE' TACTICIAN GIVING ME ORDERS-!_ " Hancock ranted. "- _I'LL BUZZSAW YOU FUCKERS UNTIL YOUR GRANDCHILDREN GET DISMEMBERED-!_ "

"-Aw shit, man, don't do it-!" Sanford groaned as he snapped a Plasma Grenade off his belt, and stumbled over to the crater in the wall.

" _-I'LL MAKE THE 503_ _RD_ _PROUD-! THE HAN' DESCENDS FROM THE HEAVENS-! AH-HAHAHAA-!_ "

In that moment, Hancock _exploded._

-Well, not literally, but he shot up into the air- kind of like the missile he had shot beforehand –leaving nothing but a fat, spreading, and towering spire of blackened smog to mark his passage.

Sanford's jaw dropped as he traced the height of the smoke tower, and he figured the Gunners on the wall must have been pretty impressed too, because pretty much all the gunfire just stopped right after it appeared.

Hancock descended like a meteor, a smoking wad of scrap and electronics, he surmounted the entire defensive purpose of the wall, and landed _on top_ of it.

All Sanford heard once Han' vanished over the nearby railing merlons above, was some Gunner screaming raggedly, the shredding wind of the robot's buzzsaw, and the distinct and unmistakable racket produced by Hancock's deranged cackling.

 _He's got it under control._ Sanford figured, pressed the sigil on the explosive in his gauntlet, and underhand slacked it into the crater beside him.

He waited five seconds.

 ** _PLLMM-BZZZZZK-!_** –The air quivered, and a bright, green flash lit the scorched piles of rubble that had vomited from the crater onto the pavement beside his boots. Sanford leapt over the debris and started stomping through the blast hole as the explosion was still settling, he felt the heat of the plasma softly kiss his skin even through the Power Armor.

Like a titan from the myths of old, Sanford was an armored behemoth as he breached the swirling arms and bands of neon green and black soot, he had his rifle up, and fired from the hip.

There was a courtyard immediately after the defense wall, and a cluster of Gunner infantry out in the open paid the price for approaching the breach too late.

Beams of crimson scythed out, and separated the guy at the head of a squad of six in two at the hip, his bloody halves folded and melted to the ground, turning colorless and transparent, blood continued to spray and catapult until even _it_ turned to vaporized dust.

The beams traveled around and even through the hapless first of its victims, a gruesome meat-grinder effect was created as four people jerked, twisted, and were shot full of glowing red holes simultaneously.

In order to maintain the stream of fire, Sanford had stilled right after his leap from the breach, he grit his teeth, his rifle screaming in front of his hip, it highlighted the whole front of his armored person hellishly crimson.

The screams and wails stopped and the bodies tumbled, one survivor leapt and pranced- kind of like a panicked gazelle –out of the pile of steaming carnage, so Sanford put two last bolts right under his armpit, and watched the corpse spin like a dancer, before tumbling on its flank.

A Gunner ran out of the woodwork right in front of him, brandishing a sawed off shotgun in one hand- the ugly looking fellow snarled under a long, yellow beard –and discharged the weapon mere feet from Sanford's stature.

The attack caught him completely off guard, Sanford flinched and hopped in his own suit as a cone of thousands of shredding parcels created a speckled pattern of black over his left shoulder and arm. Sanford recovered from the jolt that tugged at the entire left side of his torso, and he shot the guy through the chest, switching to one hand, he ripped his sword off his hip, and ploughed forwards as the blade rippled with carbon-based power.

There was a single Gunner that looped around the falling form of his shot-gun wielding friend, of Sanford's thoughts hadn't been blurred by the chaos, he would've laughed, seeing as the poor schmuck came at him with an aluminum baseball bat.

The Gunner cried out defiantly and swung his weapon for Sanford's ribs, it bounced off the reinforced plating of the suit, producing a teeth-grating **_Dnnng-!_** –noise from the ricochet.

Sanford lopped his head off with a single, horizontal brush of his sword, it ate clean through the flesh, and through the brittle bones. Sanford still had shoulder the corpse from his path as the head cartwheeled away in the air.

As Hancock caused mayhem on the defensive walls, most of the Gunners up there were congregating in an effort to destroy _him,_ it left everyone in the encampment beyond on their own to face Sanford on the ground.

Switching the faces of his gun's battery pack, Sanford stuck his sword to his hip and knelt behind a mound of crates, assault rifle rounds licked the air and punched holes in the steel of the boxes.

The Two Gunners suppressing him folded behind other piles of supplies haphazardly left in the center of the compound, it allowed a contingent of eight or so other guys to slip from position to position behind them.

Sanford aimed over the top of a crate, and fired a speckle of shots at one of his assailants, missing his target by inches as he fell behind a stack of barrels.

"-Damn it-" He grunted, someone peaked from cover and peppered his direction with a few pops from a carbine. "-SHIT-"

Sanford ducked down and changed the battery on his gun.

 ** _Click-clikclik…._** –Something about the size of his fist, and gray colored, bounced like a dropped children's toy right next to his foot.

Sanford glanced over, and gasped rather loudly.

It was a damned fragmentation grenade.

Sanford disregarded cover for but a moment- he did as he trained himself to do in the past –he picked the grenade up and tossed it like a baseball.

It didn't finish the traverse back towards whoever had thrown it, the grenade traveled halfway over all the shipping he and his aggressors were competing over, and detonated in midair.

 ** _THWACK-!_** –A pop of gray and a brief flash of white light, burning hot shreds of shrapnel visibly tore through the smoke, one flew right into a Gunner's eye, he dropped his gun and fell screaming behind a barrel.

"-HAN'-! Where the hell are you-?! I'm pinned-!" Sanford glanced at the defense wall of the encampment, now behind him, and he saw his robot up there, still cackling, surrounded by several dead Gunners.

Hancock was actually in a melee fight, there was a big Gunner fellow, wearing nothing but a green undershirt, with the slab of a tire being used as a pauldron over his one shoulder. He brandished a full-on _chainsaw,_ and was swinging the thing with abandon, Hancock was too busy darting around to get a good hit of his own.

A squad of four people were advancing down the walkway of the wall for the fight, one of them clearly had some kind of anti-tank rifle in his hand, over his arm, if they hit Hancock with _that,_ his robot was done for.

Sanford cursed, ignored his own fight, and aimed down his rifle's scope to spray the reinforcements up on the defense wall.

He fired in three bursts, killing two of the soldiers outright, one fell face-first on the walkway- half his face burnt off –the other with the bazooka cast back and flipped over the edge of the merlons, plummeting to the parking lot outside the compound.

"- _SIR-!_ " Hancock radioed, tearing his buzzsaw from the bruiser's guts, and casting a pink string of intestines about the chin of his chassis. "- _BEHIND YOU-!_ "

Sanford shifted forwards, looped around, and blew the cranium off a Gunner coming up around his cover with another shotgun. The corpse slipped forwards, blood catapulted from the goon's opened skull as he smacked against a crate, and rolled to the ground.

This plan of theirs had _half_ worked, the original intent was for Sanford to have cleared this whole side of the encampment by now with the grenades.

But as any master tactician could tell you, no plan _ever_ survived contact with the enemy. The breach had been successful, but now a long, chaotic firefight drew out in the center of the compound, and Sanford couldn't move.

A round bounced off his armor's ribcage, Sanford shouldered around a barrel and shot a Gunner moving between cover right in the chest, it blew his sternum open, the man produced a wheezing gasp as he rolled on the ground like a dying fish.

"- _Eat it, metal-man-!_ "

A Gunner woman looped around his position and attacked him with what looked like an old samurai sword, an antique, repurposed for post-apocalyptic warfare.

Sanford lifted his arms and bent his hips back, he let the sword gut nothing but air, and then he surged forwards and head butted the shorter soldier.

There was an audible crunching sound, the front of her forehead looked like it had indented, she flew back, and the sword danced from her hand and spun away.

Someone else came up from his opposite flank, Sanford spun, making to use his rifle as a blunt, but instead, all he found was a trembling, single Gunner soldier, the dirtied man had dropped a rifle at his feet, and had his arms shot out on either side of himself.

A bubble of blood popped around his exposed teeth, and Sanford had to blink and look down, to notice the quad extensions of sharpened, black chitin jutting from his attacker's stomach.

Nyx made a satisfied hum and tore her fingers free of the soldier's back, she gripped his head and tossed him off to the left, like a weightless ragdoll.

"-You can't expect the unsiner' to unpin you EVERY time can you?" She mused.

"Thanks." Sanford grinned, changing the battery on his gun. "-C'mon, let's clear this place out."

"Oui'."

"Get behind me," Sanford nodded as he rounded the crates and barrels he'd been pinned behind. "-I'll blow out the space with a grenade, take any reaction fire, you'll slip in after me."

"That is a sound strategy to me, mon cher'…" The Deathclaw dragged her nails alongside a barrel, leaving trails of matted crimson on the rusty steel, Sanford noticed her raising her nose at a cluster of four or five bodies lying in various states of dismemberment and impalement. "…rongeurs'…"

"Remind me never to piss you off," Sanford stepped over one of the people that had pinned him, he saw acutely that she had slaughtered the whole squad in minutes. "Too bad we lost the element of surprise."

"We can manage." She smirked.

They hurried to either side of a shanty hut, its wooden walls stapled with plates of drab aluminum, there were clearly sounds of people moving around inside, clacks of guns, snaps and clicks of clips being fed, sheets moving about.

"…Sounds like they're a bit confused," Sanford smirked shouldering on the arch of a flimsy, wooden door. "-Should I do the honors?"

"I have never appreciated thrown explosives…" She snorted, flexing her long, meaty fingers in front of her face. "-It's like trying to throw a pebble you can only PINCH."

"Works for me." Sanford gave the door a good elbowing, waited for the hinges snap, and the dust to start flowing, he tossed a grenade inside and motioned for her to step back.

 ** _BMMMMM-! PSSSHHHKK-!_** –The explosion must have hit a support beam or something, that, or the construction quality of the building was as bad as it physically appeared.

Whatever the case, no sooner had the grenade gone off did a blooming wash of dust overtake both of them, wood snapped, metal screamed, debris clacked, piled and created a small tsunami.

The entire scrap shack buckled and fell in on itself, vomiting rubble everywhere, a chunk of a board bounced off Sanford's arm, and Nyx had to shield her snout with one of her hands. They were two pillars of humanoid shadow against the wash of the smoke and destruction.

"-DAMN-!" Sanford called over all the ruckus, waving a gauntlet about to clear the smog. "-Those things got KICK-!"

"-We should move with purpose, Sanford-!" Nyx snapped, pointing through the haze of obliteration, she indicated the inner workings of compound to their flank. "-They'll recover soon enough, press a counter attack!"

"-Yep, you're right," Sanford waved her on. "-Follow me!"

The base was larger than the little outpost they'd taken out, there was a row of these scrap shacks, at least five more sturdier models than the outskirt one they'd just trashed with the grenade. In addition to that, the back of a large apartment complex had been converted into an armored watchtower, there was an open bar and watering hole in the center of the base, with old Christmas lights draped haphazardly about the roof of a wall-lacking scrap bungalow.

"-Sounds like Han's having a blast," Sanford jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, they could both hear the robot _cackling,_ even though the sounds of gunfire had stopped from the front defense wall of the compound. "-Get it? Because, the missile, and, the EXPLOSION, and-"

Nyx was looking at him rather impatiently, unimpressed.

"…Oof." Sanford muttered, unpinning another grenade from his belt. "Tough crowd, baby."

"Give that to me." Nyx pinched the explosive between two of her fingers as they lined up on either side of another scrap hut's door. "If you would press the button, monsieur'?"

"Huh," Sanford reached over and clicked the sigil, arming the grenade between her nails. "-Throw it in."

Nyx punched the door so hard that it smashed through the wood of the frame in the opposite direction it was meant to open from, metal creaked, someone inside shouted, and Nyx flicked the grenade inside, as she described earlier, like a little _pebble._

 ** _Bmmmmkkk-!_** –A scream was cut short, and the whole shack buckled, but luckily didn't collapse in their proximity. Dust spewed from a hundred structural breaches, the whole building appeared to _shift_ on its own foundation.

"-Look out…" He mumbled, pressing against her gut, Sanford shifted his Deathclaw aside, and sprayed the doorframe of another barracks hut as a trio of Gunners tore out from the door, all of them still in their underwear.

 ** _PMPMPMPMPMPMPMPM-!_** –Sanford cut them down with a long spray of his Laser Rifle, firing from the hip, the bodies twisted, were blown in half, and one disintegrated, turning into a human-shaped mass of glowing red, before simmering for a dissipating string of dust on the ground.

"Good shot." She commented over his shoulder.

"-I have another bad pun," Sanford chuckled. "-Guess I caught them, with their PANTS DOWN, huh? Huh?"

"You're revolting." She smiled. "But adorable in your own way."

"…Thanks, I think?"

"-HA-HA-HA-! DEMOCRACY FOR THE WIN-! I SHOWED THOSE TWINKLE-TOED FUCKERS-!" Hancock flew around the corner of the building they'd just blown out, his thruster flaring dangerously as he lifted himself off his normal levitation level. "-We kicked ASS, sir-! We just BLITZED those diaper-wearin' bastards! SENT EM' ALL STRAIGHT TO HELL! HA-HAAAAA-! I LOVE YOU-!"

"OOoohhwow, yeah, no, no don't ever say that again," Sanford cringed, turning around to face the Mr. Gutsy. "-I'll keep you around as my bud', a BRO', that's how kids used to say it, right?"

"BAH-! YOU'RE NOT MY TYPE ANYHOW-!" Hancock dismissed violently, his chassis jolting from the shout. "-YOU PROBABLY HAVE A POSTER OF MUSSOLINI THAT YOU LAVISH OVER! FASCIST SON OF A BITCH-!"

"Remind me to find you a photo of some polished coffee machine or something," Sanford retorted. "-Closest thing to a pinup you'll ever get, man."

"-YOU FOODSTAMP REJECTING, TICK-EATING, YELLOW-EYED DIRT-HUMPER-!" Hancock shouted. "-Your mother, WAS A MONKEY!"

"Kinda' hard to doubt that."

"YOU SLANTED WAX-APPLICATION-!"

"Bite me."

"FUCK YOURSELF!"

"Is that all you two really do, is fight?" Nyx groaned.

"-LOOKATME-!" Hancock turned on her. "-WE'RE SURROUNDED BY A BUNCH OF DEAD ASSHOLES, SANFORD'S A FREAK WHO GOT HITCHED TO GODZILLA'S STEPSISTER, AND I'M JUST THE POOR MOTHER FUCKER IN THE MIDDLE-! How can I NOT be so messed up?!"

"You've ALWAYS been messed up…" Sanford cringed. "-I mean, really."

"SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS!"

"Oh Christ…"

"CHRISTY-BOY HAS NOTHIN' ON ME! KEEP YOUR CRUCIFIXES AND BIBLES YOU ZEALOUS BROWN-HOOD-!"

"I don't even know what to say."

"So say NOTHING." The Deathclaw growled. "-I have developed yet another headache."

"-AH-HAHAHAHAAA-! LATHER IN THE INDIGESTION, YOU SHRIVELED SWAMP-BITCH!"

"-COMPANY-!" Sanford gripped Nyx's flank and shoved her away from the open ground with a heave of his arm.

"-HOW COME YOU DON'T PUT YOURSELF IN FRONT OF ME WHEN WE'RE GETTING SHOT AT-?!" Hancock screamed, even as Laser fire flew over both their heads.

"-Perhaps I'm special in a way you're not-?" Nyx mocked over the gunfire.

"-YOU WON'T SUBDUE THIS MAN UNDER YOUR MIND-POWERS FOREVER, GOJIRA-!"

"-Shut the fuck up and shoot BACK-!" Sanford grabbed his robot and brought both of them behind the corner of a shack.

Laser fire tore up the general vicinity, a humanoid shape had landed on top of the roof of one of the nearby shacks in the barracks row, and two arms each laden with clusters of automatic carbon-based weaponry opened up in earnest.

It was another Assaultron, and it had friends.

Two Mr. Gutsy models floated out from an aisle between two of the buildings, and a cluster of Gunner infantry used them as cover to advance closer, roughly five soldiers, three robots.

"-The scans DID say there were a lot of these people-!" Sanford jerked from cover and sprayed one of the Mr. Gutsy's, the Laser rounds pierced something vital, and the robot popped like a fiery zit, sending blackened scrap and fire everywhere. "-NYX-! See if you can hit them from the side-!"

His Deathclaw had already zoomed off down another alley, it was just him and Hancock.

"-Gimme' some covering fire-!" Sanford jolted back behind the corner of the shack, a wad of Plasma bolts tore off half the wall keeping him concealed in a blast of dust.

"Already got you covered, sir-!" Hancock boasted, his thruster flaring, and carrying him on top of the roof of the building they were hiding behind. "-SAY HELLO TO MY FLAMES OF DOOM, YOU FUCKERS-!"

 ** _Pssshhhhhffffwwhhmmm-!_** –a pulsating cone of blackness and flame flowed like a stream of piss over the shack's top, and two Gunner infantrymen were engulfed, they ignited and became human torches, twisting, their screams consumed by the fire, they folded amid the grace of Hancock's flamethrower and died slowly.

Using the cover kicked up by the attack, Sanford waited for a batch of Laser bolts to skim by his arm, and then he spun around the corner, and popped five shots into the chest of the Assaultron model on the roof ahead.

 ** _Plsskkk-!_** –The robot's torso clapped open in a flurry of sparks, it was tossed head over heels and vanished in a trail of soot on the opposite side of the shack.

Hancock shot the other Mr. Gutsy full of Plasma holes until the Gunner robot flew in a complete circle, and smacked onto the ground, a broken, blackened heap.

Flesh squelched, a pained screech silenced, Nyx slid a Gunner off her nails, lifted another in her opposite hand, and squeezed her fingers until the woman's head crunched flat like a large grape. Blood simmered down and over the joint of her large thumb, Nyx hauled back and tossed the casualty clean through the wall of one of the shacks.

Wood clapped, debris shifted, the body created a hole and vanished within noisily.

"-Let's wrap this up…" Sanford breathed, changing the battery on his gun. "-And end it, right now."

"NO PRISONERS! NO SURVIVORS! I like your thinking, sir!" Hancock floated down from the prior roof.

"…Let us be RID of this…" Nyx spat, grinding her bloody claws together. "-Do your technologies indicate where our quarry is?"

"Scans say…" Sanford trailed, blinking open a few windows in his helm's HUD. "-Eight heartbeats, one robotic sig', they're moving north, in the apartment over there, see?"

"The one plated and marked to the sky with Gunner insignia?" Nyx creased her chops. "-How could one miss THAT, monsieur'?"

"I'm killing every one of these bastards," Sanford stomped forwards. "-I'll kill every single one of them."

"That's normally something I'D say-!" Hancock complained. "-Don't steal my lines, San' of the Ford'-!"

"This is our method of combating these people?" Nyx queried, following closely on the man's heels. "We are simply going to wipe them out one outpost at a time?"

"If that's what it takes." Sanford said. "I'm tired of getting shot at."

"-HA! That's NEVER gonna' go away!" Hancock laughed.

 _Way to hit home, man._ Sanford wanted to tell him, but he kept his mouth shut.

Around them, the compound burned, or was at the least strewn with the dead and spilt blood of them respectively, carnage ringed all three, and onwards they pressed to eliminate any last traces of their declaration of war.

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-

 ** _PMPMPMPM-!_**

-A last series of shots echoed around the room, plaster thudded, a body tumbled, and the final mark of resistance to his advance wilted under the duress of his weapon.

Sanford's rifle kicked, blood speckled the wall, and the corpse of a final Gunner soldier slumped onto the floor, dropping a handgun, which heavily bounced away, and lye still ahead of the man's cranium.

All in all, the first floor of the apartment was soiled thoroughly by the soon-to-be decomposing hulks of the last survivors, there was a body strewn over a large bar that covered the eastern flank of the room, another pair were blown to pieces in the center of a blackened scorch.

There was even one Gunner soldier who resembled a smashed tomato from the shoulders-up from where Sanford had felled him, and promptly had used his boot to dispatch the assailant. For almost an hour, gunfire had overtaken the atmosphere here, steel had been tortured, wood snapped, concrete cracked, and innards spilt.

All of it whittled away for the calming sensation of ending, followed by nothing but the wistful breeze of a Bostonian midday.

Sifting through the rubble, idly kicking papers and chunks of wood, Nyx the Deathclaw was finding her time here more and more of an anathema to her patience, as she was relieving her boredom solely by nudging around _garbage,_ and what a low that was to sink to.

For a long time after the last of the Gunners were dead, Hancock had taken to sifting through the wreckage of the compound outside, and his victorious cackles, and defeated curses, consistently and constantly echoed from the courtyard, and into the apartment.

Rays of gray sunlight streamed in through bullet holes and shrapnel wounds torn into the plaster of the walls and the wood of the ceiling, the building had already been ravaged, but _now_ it resembled more and more a tower of Swiss cheese for all the battle damage wrought into it today.

What Nyx found astonishing, was that Sanford had been living here for around a _decade,_ and Boston was just so big, that he was still finding places he hadn't shot up to hell. He had memorized the layout of the region expertly, and according to him, he had always avoided this section of the city, out of fear of retribution from the Gunners.

"…Back then, it was just me and Han', against the world," Sanford mused, his suit comically and painfully leant forwards, as he hunched over a rusty work desk, his fingers tapping a series of keys on an old terminal computer sitting on the desk's top. "…I guess that kinda' changed."

"You now have me to look after your arriere'…" Nyx hummed, she paced in the foyer of the room, where they both now resided in the second floor of the apartment tower, one that thankfully, was not scattered with the dead like the floor below. "…To think, a year ago I saw that as a curse, a mauvaise' chose'…"

"I can't blame you, really," Sanford chuckled, clicking another key, he glanced at her under the lenses of his snarling X-01 helmet. "-I DID try to shoot you."

"-And I tried to impale you…" The Deathclaw stood in the center of the room, watching her taloned toes, her long head bowed, and her yellow eyes dull. "…Were you… STRANGE, as a child?" She suddenly asked.

"What?" He looked at her and then back at the computer. "What do you mean, girl?"

"…Did you not fit in with others of your kind?" She honestly asked him, her thick tail curling in a slow, meticulous arc behind her waist. "-Is that why you pursued our relation'?"

"…Uhm," Sanford tapped his metal-capped fingers on the desk, thinking about his words carefully. "-Before I answer that, are you asking if I always had a…. THING, for, THINGS, that weren't human?"

"Oui', not that I could imagine much choice back then…" She hummed with musing.

"…I… PURSUED, us, being US, because I love who you ARE, not what you look like," He admitted, leaning back from the terminal. "-Ya' know, I wasn't, I guess, INTO, lizards, or whatnot, before I met you, I dunno'…"

"-Is that purely what made you take such a drastic leap?" She continued.

"DRASTIC?" He laughed. "Wow."

"Mm."

"-Uhmmm, first off, I-I didn't, LIKE you, until, AFTER we'd talked for a little bit, I… I was a lonely guy, Nyx, I-I enjoyed your company, I still do, you're my, ahm…. SIGNIFICANT OTHER, eh, how about that?" He smiled.

"Mm." Nyx bowed her head from the resulting flush. "…But why a lezard'?"

"-You're not a LIZARD," He shook his head. "-You're, just… YOU. You just look different from a lot of other people… Ya' know, five hundred years ago, they used to persecute people loving other people, because of the color of their SKIN, and if we can accept people with different colored skin loving each other, what's so different from that and us, right?"

"It is more than just our SKIN," She patted her hip, and looked at him. "-You can see through all of that?"

"….It," He stuttered. "-It doesn't bother me, no."

"…Mm," She nodded, blinking slowly. "-I was entailed to ask, because of-"

"-The other night?"

"….Oui'."

"-T-That was my fault," Sanford stated. "-Ya' know, SURVIVING, out in this dump doesn't leave a lot of room for getting around the block and shit, I've wiped out a quarter of one of the largest damned military factions in Boston, and I'm still a fuckin' virgin, I mean, the hell…"

"…That is simply because you enjoy STANDARDS," Nyx purred. "I admire that."

"…It's just, h-here's where, what you asked me before, here's where it stands with me…" Sanford tapped a few more keys on the console before him, working as he spoke. "-Humanity, is so…. FLAWED, just, we lived in a world where people didn't care, and focused on all the wrong things, and, after seeing the worst of what the nature of my species IS, once I found YOU, how the hell could I go BACK, to what other people view as right?"

"…I feel…" Nyx trailed. "-that that question is beyond my responsibility to answer."

"I don't think it NEEDS an answer," He scoffed. "-I already have it."

"Mm, and what answer would that be, mon cher'?"

"Fuck 'em." Sanford grunted. "-Humanity shuns people who try to do good and honesty, how can I respect what they do and how they work?"

"…You talk as if you AREN'T one."

"Some days," He admitted. "I wish I wasn't."

He tapped another key, and the browned, plastic machine gave off a confirmatory bleep.

"Bingo." Sanford whispered, leaning closer to the screen.

"Qu'Est-ce que c'est?"

"Looks like this WHISKEY fellow IS really one of the Generals that prisoner I took mentioned," He explained, reading a few log messages between communications officers that were stored on the machine. "-He's the General over the center district of Gunner operations…"

"DISTRICTS, mon cher'?"

"Yep, the Gunner's have this shit where they divide their little zones up, each General has a district, the numbers change every year…" Sanford examined some more files. "-Looks like we, just wiped out one of the largest outposts in General Sheridan's region."

"I'm sure he'll be thrilled…" Nyx rolled her eyes.

"I hope so," Sanford nodded. "He's the first one who'll be hearing from us."

"So, we ARE attacking the head of the snake?" She quizzed.

"Yep." He grinned. "We're gonna' find it, hack it off, piss on it, and bury it."

"Tellement jolie'…"

"- _SANFORD-! SAN-FORDDD-!_ "

"-WHAT? Why are you yelling? AGAIN?" Sanford grunted into his com link when Han's rants garbled through loudly.

"- _I FOUND SOMETHING! IT LOOKS BAD-ASS-!_ "

"What is it?"

" _-LOOK'S LIKE A GOOD COMMIE'-KILLIN' GUN-! AND IT'S SCOPED-! FOR DEMOCRACY-!_ " **_Csshh-chhss_**

"-Was that static?" Sanford mentioned the strange garbling noise that interrupted Hancock's connection. "Han'?"

"- _HOLY FUCK-BALLS-!_ "

 ** _Clak-clack-!_** –Plasma fire echoed distantly from outside the building.

"…SANFORD…" Nyx edged, she had rushed over to one of the windows overlooking the compound below, and her jaw was lowered in a moment of shock. "-The usiner' appears to be in distress."

"What's happening?!" Sanford snatched his rifle up, and stomped around the desk. "-Nyx!"

"-They're coming out of the ground-!" She turned around. "-We have to help him!"

" _-I'LL SHOW YOU-! YOU CHITINOUS, BUTT-CHEEK LICKING HICKS-! STICK THIS IN YOUR MANDIBLES-! AH-HA-! AH-HAHA-! HAAAAA-! OH-! OH-OH FUCKS OF THE FBI'S FAILURE LIST-! YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE YOU SONS OF BITCHES-!_

 _MAN DOWN-!_

 _SANFORD-! SAN-FORD-! I NEED A MEDIC-! OR AN ENGINEER-! OR A VOLKSWAGON EXECUTIVE-! THE LATTER PURELY SO I CAN VENT MY FRUSTRATIONS BY GIVING HIM A POWER WEDGIE-! FUCKIN' NAZI-MOBILES-!_

 _AHHHHHHH-! HA-HAA-! HEEEELLLLP-! I'M BEING VIOLATED-!_ "

* * *

-0-0-0-0-0-


	11. STORY'S BEING REWRITTEN

_**So I'm just posting this update in case there are some stragglers who didn't get the memo**_

 _ **THIS VERSION OF THE STORY IS DEFUNCT**_

 _ **It's kaput. Ended. Boom. That's it**_

 _ **:I**_

 _ **Go read the rewritten version I'm writing**_

 _ **It's on my profile**_

 _ **Worse Than 2 Pairs of Handcuffs: REDUX**_

 _ **It's written better and shit**_

 _ **I will be removing this version soon and will be entirely switching over to the rewritten version**_

 _ **Thanks peeps**_

 _ **~Don**_


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